M57 Still Life with Ring Nebula

There is a double symbol in this painting.

One was a personal experience, and I saw the Milky Way with the naked eye for the first time in my life at Hiruzen Plateau, which I visited with my family a few years ago.

It was also the first time that a starry sky was visible with depth, and since so many stars were visible, it was impossible to confirm the constellations.

The other is Kenji Miyazawa's children's story “Signal and Signals.” This is a story like Romeo and Juliet, where two people who can't be connected on earth end up in a dream and end up together by going beyond space.

There is a line like this in the scene where they talk about love on earth.

“I'll give you a wedding ring, well, tomorrow's four-strung blue star, isn't it?”

“yeah”

“You can see a small ring under that lowest leg; it's a ring nebula. That ring of light, please accept that. It's my sincerity.”

It is said that this is the M57 Ring Nebula. So I decided to post this astrophotograph next to the star map.

The title of the solo exhibition “The Phantom Light in the Daylight” was taken from the book title of Kenji Miyazawa and another copperplate engraver named Kiyoshi Hasegawa. As a homage to Hasegawa Kiyoshi, I drew a gyroscope and a ring.

When I look up at the starry sky, I think that people long ago saw the same thing.

Kenji Miyazawa, Galileo, and the ancient Mesopotamian people who named the constellations all looked at the same starry sky. I want to be connected to such a large flow of time through production.