Born in Yamagata city, Yamagata Prefecture, Japan, stone artist Akie Nakata is a gifted artist with a very unique eye.
Akie became a stone artist in 2010 after she worked as an art professor at a junior college. But she has been collecting since she was a little girl. She was walking along a riverbank when she saw a stone that looked like a rabbit.
She once said, โStones have their own intention, and I consider my encounters with them as cuesโฆ to go ahead and paint what I see on them.โ
Since then, she would carefully choose each stone she came across because she was particular about its shape.
She always chooses the stones that have their natural characters already depicted in its shape, just like the rabbit stone.
โI never process stones, and would never cut off an edge to alter the shape,โ Akie shared.
But she doesnโt just sit down and start the painting.
Even though it seems the stones have called out to her, she still has to weigh out the dimensions and qualities of the stone.
She asks herself, โAm I positioning the backbone in the right place? Does it feel right? Am I forcing something that disagrees with the natural shape of the stone?โ
She feels each stone in her hand to feel and embody what is has โsilently witnessed over the millennia.โ
She believes that each rock had a story to tell and the rock chose her to tell that story.
Once she is satisfied with the answers, that is the only time when she will pick up her brush and start to paint. She uses acrylic paint with each stone.
She always paints the eyes last.
Akie will only consider the work done and complete when she could feel the eyes are alive and are now looking back at her.
She told My Modern Met, โTo me, completing a piece of work is not about how much detail I draw, but whether I feel the life in the stone.โ
All the painted stones she has for sale are posted on her Facebook page.
All of her products are one of a kind even if they may be the same animal. She has painted almost every animal, from cats to dogs to mice to raccoons to owls, elephants, and iguanas.
Since the shape and dimensions of the stones have not been tampered in any way, each stone painting remains different from each other.
So once itโs sold, there is no guarantee there will be another like it in the future.
Akie also doesnโt accept custom orders because she canโt predict when sheโll be able to find the perfect stone for those types of orders. Her work only starts when she encounters the right stone. But most of the stones she gets will always fit the palm of the hand.
She hopes that the people who buy her stone paintings treasure them as much as they treasure their own lives.
She is currently painting special stones for her solo exhibition in Japan this November 2019.
Itโs really amazing how any medium can be used to creatively tell a story. And Akie has definitely used every facet of her creativity to transform a simple stone into a beautiful story.
Would you like to see more of the stone paintings she has created? Watch the video below.
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
