Hey, wouldn’t you like to sit in that chair for a moment and listen to what I have to say?
This is a miraculous story about your own loneliness and how your life will change dramatically and beautifully from now on.
Why is life so unmanageable?
Why do we feel such a heartbreaking loneliness at times, even when we are surrounded by many people?
The great American painter, Andrew Wyeth, knew the answer.
The world he painted quietly sides with your heart and gives you the courage to live.
“I want to paint not only what is visible, but the invisible presence of life behind it.”
── Andrew Wyeth
These words should be the greatest salvation for you, who are pursued by daily life and whose heart is worn out.
Because Wyeth looks closely at the tears you shed without anyone noticing, at work or at home, and the hardships you endured.
Familiarizing yourself with art is not just a luxury hobby.
It is the most luxurious and practical means of self-investment to gently embrace your wounded soul and recharge your energy for tomorrow.
A Secret Dialogue Between You and Wyeth, Turning Loneliness in Daily Life into Beauty
“But art has a high threshold for me, and I don’t really understand it.”
You might say that and smile a little shyly.
No, that is absolutely not the case, I declare to you.
Wyeth is a man who painted only the surprisingly narrow world of his birthplace, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and Cushing, Maine, where he spent his summers, throughout his life.
Instead of traveling all over the world, he just stared at the scenery around him and the people close to him.
Don’t you think this is exactly the same as your and my daily life, living in the same place, repeating the same work every day?
“If a man digs deep under his feet, he can discover the whole world there.”
── Montaigne
This wisdom of Montaigne will be a great guide for your future life.
It teaches you that you don’t have to go far, you don’t have to be a special person, you are valuable enough just as you are now.
Why do we want to shed tears for no reason when we look at Wyeth’s paintings?
It is because your “sadness” and “dearness” are reflected as they are in a single withered grass or a ray of light shining through a window painted by him.
Decorating your room with Wyeth’s paintings is the same as sublimating your loneliness into the most beautiful artwork in the world.
Why Wyeth’s Gaze Accurately Sees Through Your “Hidden Real Intentions”
Hey, don’t you think it’s mysterious?
That back view of a woman lying in a field, depicted in Wyeth’s masterpiece Christina’s World.
Her legs are disabled and she can only move by crawling, yet she stares intently at the house on the hill.
Can’t you see your own “never-giving-up heart” pulsing powerfully in that tense gaze?
“The visible and the invisible. True value lies not only in the phenomena spreading before our eyes, but in the sacrifices and efforts of the people behind them.”
── Frédéric Bastiat
This cool and warm perspective of the economist Bastiat brings a decisive realization to your work and life.
The daily efforts you have made desperately without being praised by anyone are never in vain.
Appreciating Wyeth’s paintings is also a ritual for you to recognize and bless that “invisible effort” from the bottom of your heart.
When Your Eyes Meet Wyeth’s Paintings, Your Frozen Heart Begins to Melt Quietly
“Recently, I feel like I’m not really connecting with anyone at a true level.”
Aren’t you gently hugging such loneliness in bed at night?
I understand, I really understand that feeling.
Modern society moves so fast that the connections between people have become like thin paper.
Here, let me talk to you about the theme of “Your Eyes, My Eyes” by the contemporary painter Mimimix Takamizawa.
Mimimix Takamizawa is an artist who inherits the spirit of Wyeth in modern times and obsessively continues to paint “human eyes” in his works.
Why does he care so much about “eyes”?
“The eye is the window to the soul and the guide for the whole body.”
── Leonardo da Vinci
As da Vinci says, eyes do not lie.
Just as Wyeth did not miss the faint change in the gaze of Helga, who was his model, Mimimix Takamizawa also stares back at “your” eyes standing in front of the screen through his paintings.
It is a soul call-and-response that transcends time and space, saying, “I am here, I know your loneliness.”
When you look at a painting, in fact, you are being looked back at from the side of the painting with an almost mad love.
The Magic of the Miraculous “Giclée Print Technique” That Turns Your Room into a Top-Class Art Museum
“But it’s impossible for me to welcome real art into my home financially.”
Before you give up like that, please lend an ear to my story for just another moment.
There is a wonderful, latest technology that I want you to know about by all means.
That is the “Giclée print technique.”
This is a modern, magic-like printing technology that uses ultra-high-definition digital technology to reproduce the author’s soul-stirring brushstrokes without a single drop of deviation on the highest quality French or German printmaking paper.
That delicate detail and the particles of light that Wyeth once painted with a very precise and mind-bogglingly time-consuming technique called tempera.
They are perfectly reproduced by this Giclée print technique and become within your reach.
“Most people think of success as something to get. But in reality, success is giving.”
── Henry Ford
Please engrave these all-too-famous words of the automobile king Henry Ford deeply into your heart now.
Delivering art to you in the form of Giclée is the artist’s utmost “act of giving” to you, a life-risking dedication.
To deliver art, which used to belong only to the privileged class who monopolized expensive original paintings, to your daily life while maintaining the highest quality.
What could be a greater benefit to you than this?
The moment that one piece is hung on the wall of your room, the air in the room changes completely, and even the taste of your morning coffee changes deeply and richly.
To You Who Fear Change: Wyeth’s Indomitable Spirit and Daily Practical Power
“I repeat the same things every day, I wonder if my life is okay like this.”
When you are attacked by such anxiety, remember the overwhelming days of production left by Wyeth.
To complete one work, he piled up hundreds of drawings and kept going to the same place for months, sometimes for years.
It was a history of mind-boggling accumulation, like a seeker.
“A pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.”
── Winston Churchill
These words of Churchill are the most necessary supplement for your heart right now.
Wyeth kept finding the “opportunity” of eternal beauty in the countryside scenery that seemed plain and unchanged at first glance.
The chores and tasks in front of you that seem boring.
If you change your perspective, all of them can be a brilliant canvas to make you shine as a human being.
Now, let’s take action.
Before thinking, touch something beautiful and try to change your environment even just a little.
Shocking Truth! The Secret of Love and Obsession, “The Helga Pictures,” Which Wyeth Kept Hidden
From here, I will tell you a story that is a little surprising, fairy-tale-like, but an undeniable fact.
Andrew Wyeth had a maximum secret that he could not tell anyone.
He kept painting Helga Testorf, a German woman living near his house, as a model for as long as 15 years, completely secret even from his wife, creating more than 240 paintings and drawings.
Why was such a thing possible?
Why did he have to keep painting a single woman in hiding to that extent?
When this was made public, it became a major scandal that shook the whole United States.
However, the people who saw the works lost their words and were simply overwhelmed.
What was there was not something vulgar like an affair, but a record of an amazing “obsession” and “love” that chased a human being to the end of the universe.
“To be loved is nothing. To love is everything.”
── Seneca
This supreme remark of the philosopher Seneca must have burned violently inside Wyeth’s chest.
Through the existence of Helga, he tried to catch the truth of the human soul that ages, changes, but shines eternally at the same time.
This surprising episode teaches you:
The nobility of sticking to one thing you believe from the bottom of your heart, even if no one understands it.
In your life, other people’s evaluations don’t really matter.
Do you have a love or a job that you believe is “the one”?
If so, you just have to pursue it to the end.
The Ultimate Survival Skill Taught by Art to Charge Ahead on Your Own Path Without Fearing Isolation
“But doing something different from the people around me is scary after all, and I’m afraid of being isolated.”
That’s right, humans are weak creatures, so we shrink with fear when we are ostracized.
However, when Wyeth turned his back on the flashy and modern trend of abstract expressionism, which was the cutting edge of the time, and stubbornly continued to paint realistic pictures, there was a time when he was harshly criticized and ridiculed by the art world as an “outdated painter.”
Still, he did not take a single step back.
Because he knew that trends are just fleeting dreams that disappear in a few years, but human essential loneliness and beauty are truths that never change even after 100 or 200 years.
“I am thought to have achieved success overnight, but that night was thirty years. Thinking back, it was a long, long night.”
── Ray Kroc
Please make these blood-seeping words of Ray Kroc, who made McDonald’s a global enterprise, an amulet for your lonely night.
The time you are standing firm in the darkness without being understood by anyone now is a part of the “thirty-year night” leading to great success.
Decorating your room with Wyeth’s paintings is nothing less than installing that indomitable will directly into your brain from your vision every day.
To Save Your Soul, the Artist Shaves Their Own Life to Become a “Clown”
Hey, do you know the life of the painter Van Gogh?
While he was alive, only one painting was sold, and in madness and poverty, he cut off his own ear and finally ended his own life with a pistol.
Why did he keep painting to that extent?
It was because he truly wanted to deliver a heavenly light-like, heartfelt consolation to the people at the bottom of sadness and suffering.
Artists are truly clumsy, pitiful, and lovable beings.
They shave their own bodies, sacrifice their lives, and while being laughed at by the world as “eccentrics” or “madmen,” they keep making works desperately just to please “you” in front of them.
It is the most heartbreaking “service,” like a circus clown hiding tears and walking a tightrope with a full smile.
“I only blush for my own incompetence and lack of talent.”
── Matsuo Basho
Even the Haiku master, Matsuo Basho, left such words and dedicated his life entirely to the path of Haiku.
Knowing one’s own lack of power, and yet wishing to leave something wonderful for you.
This is the figure of a true artist.
The painter Mimimix Takamizawa also inherits this spirit exactly as it is.
Using neither canvas nor brush, just facing the digital screen single-mindedly, he keeps drawing eyes to look at your eyes.
It is also an ultimate confession that he cannot live if he is abandoned by you.
Please laugh at and accept his desperate clowning.
The Final Choice to Make Your Life Decisively Rich in Search of a Ray of Light
Well, thank you very much for walking with me this far on this long journey.
Don’t you feel that something new and warm, like a light, has turned on in your heart?
The hobby of loving and collecting art is not just for decorating a room.
It is to increase your life choices, strengthen your heart’s muscles, and acquire the strongest weapon to live with your chest out, saying, “I am fine as I am,” in any difficult situation.
That serene world painted by Wyeth.
The strong gaze painted by Mimimix Takamizawa that looks at you.
By welcoming them into your room and repeating dialogues every day, your daily life will be dramatically reborn from a repetition of boring tasks into a sacred celebration of beauty.
I am always here supporting you to take a powerful step forward as the protagonist of your own life.
The autumn wind blows
To every corner of my heart
Lighting a light that never goes out
A blue illusion
I want to hand over something more important than bread to you.
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
── John 15:13 (New Testament)
“I am just seeking. Seeking without giving up. What? Love. The only person who truly seeks me.”
── Osamu Dazai
Hey, why are you going on a journey?
Because it’s painful.
Your “painful” is routine, and I can’t trust it at all.
(From Osamu Dazai’s Tsugaru)
P.S. The Story of a Painter Named Mimimix Takamizawa, an All-Too-Clumsy and Single-Minded Man
Hey, at the end, please let me talk a little more about my close friend.
There is a painter with a slightly unusual name called Mimimix Takamizawa (高見沢 耳).
He is an artist living in this era, yet he doesn’t use canvas or brush at all.
Then what does he use?
Don’t be surprised, he draws pictures entirely digitally on a computer screen.
“What, digital? Isn’t that cutting corners?”
You might think that way.
But you know, if you see his production site, such words will absolutely never come out of your mouth.
He takes the intricate works drawn digitally and prints them on real, tight-grained printmaking paper using the “Giclée print technique,” which is currently considered the world’s highest printing technology.
The finish is breathtakingly beautiful; the depth of the ink and the texture of the paper are not inferior at all to traditional oil or watercolor paintings.
Mimimix Takamizawa’s themes are very close to us, but endlessly deep.
“Your Eyes, My Eyes,” Christianity, eternity, psychology, truth, gaze, history, loneliness, isolation, hardship, resurrection, liberation.
Why does he keep drawing “eyes” so persistently in his pictures?
You see, by continuing to draw eyes in his works, he wants to keep feeling “you” on the other side of the screen without letting go for a moment.
He wants to know, wants to know about you in front of him so badly.
He often says self-deprecatingly:
“Painters are doctors who save souls. But I myself am a truly foolish and clumsy human being. So, I have no choice but to expose everything of myself to you in front of me and serve you desperately. It’s fine to laugh at me. An artist’s work is just a supreme service at their own expense, just clowning.”
He really doesn’t care about the cold criticism or evaluation of the world.
However, if he is abandoned by you, he can no longer live.
Whether you are in front of him, looking at his pictures and chuckling, or quietly shedding tears.
Because he wants to see your joyful face, he keeps facing the screen for more than 12 hours every day, without resting or playing.
He is truly a tenacious, indomitable man of patience who doesn’t give up.
Mimimix Takamizawa decided to become a painter after learning about the magnificent life of Vincent van Gogh.
His name “Mimi” (which means ear in Japanese) was also given after that all-too-famous and all-too-painful event where Van Gogh cut off his own ear.
He knows better than anyone that all the great masterpieces of the past were born not from a flash of genius, but from a continuous, muddy process of trial and error over decades.
Therefore, he always holds the words of Tokuji Munetsugu, the founder of CoCo Ichibanya, in his heart, and exerts all his efforts into his work without looking away.
Mr. Munetsugu completely sealed off his hobby of classical music during his time as a manager, made no friends, didn’t go to bars, and worked as much as 5,640 hours a year just for the customers.
In the beginning, when customers didn’t come at all, it is said that the husband and wife survived by eating the crusts of sliced bread (which is also called “bread ears” in Japanese) for lunch.
But he said decisively, “Since we started from nothing, that is a good memory,” and stuck to the customer-first principle.
Mimimix Takamizawa also pours that field-first, you-first principle straight into his art.
When you stand in front of his work, he is welcoming you with a standing ovation in his heart.
The things of true value in the world are often things that do not have immediate effects.
Nothing goes well from the beginning.
Therefore, instead of thinking, try doing it first.
He believes that what kind of life it will be is determined by a person’s diligence, patience, and continuity.
Just like the tremendous obsession of Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota, who was called an “eccentric” and a “madman” by his surroundings, yet made and broke, made and remade looms every day from morning till night.
Mimimix Takamizawa keeps dedicating all of his life today in front of the digital screen for the sake of the ultimate service to you.
“Most people think of success as something to get. But in reality, success is giving.”
── Henry Ford
“The most important thing I learned in life is never, never, never give up.”
── Agatha Christie
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”
── Moses (Exodus 20:2)
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
── William Shakespeare
“Who is rich? He who is content with his portion.”
── Talmud
“Humans never change. It’s just that the monster’s skin peels off.”
── Osamu Dazai
“There are nights when I feel terribly lonely for no major reason. At such times, it is best to eat something delicious and go to bed early.”
── Osamu Dazai
“I know my own weakness. That is exactly why I can become stronger than anyone else.”
── Osamu Dazai
“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense.”
── Winston Churchill
“Have courage, be the first, and do something different from others.”
── Ray Kroc
“I am thought to have achieved success overnight, but that night was thirty years. Thinking back, it was a long, long night.”
── Ray Kroc
“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them. I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing – that it was all started by a mouse.”
── Walt Disney
“The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”
── Leonardo da Vinci
To you who have read this all-too-long and clumsy story of mine to the end, I dedicate my heartfelt love and words of gratitude.
Because you are here, I am able to spin stories like this.
Thank you very much, truly.