Gobies 

Imamura Shiko grew up in Yokohama during the time of the foreign settlement. Keen to make paintings that transcended the constraints of traditional painting, he established groups with artist friends and they devoted themselves to study. One such group, Sekiyokai, was led by Shiko, and this painting was included in its third exhibition. The stones on the river bed are depicted loosely with dots to express the movement and transparency of the water, while seven fish are painstakingly rendered with fins, eyes, and body patterns. In a vertically long scroll, Shiko has created an easy rhythm with vertical lines made from dots intersecting with the sandfish. Based on the story that Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou enjoyed watching fish swimming, there has long been a tradition in Eastern painting of expressing a person’s emotional state in the appearance of fish swimming in the water. It would seem in this painting that the emotion is pure joy.
(YATSUYANAGI Sae)