Hands and Eyes from the Earth 

Trees like outstretched limbs, dry leaves curled like caterpillars, tree stumps resembling eyes entwined with roots—in this seemingly damp forest-like scene, you get the sense of nature’s life force persevering through a harsh winter.
All of Kudo Kojin’s art is grounded in his own observations of nature, particularly in his rural hometown of Aomori. Yet at the same time, Kudo admitted he was influenced by the mysterious worldview of 15th-century painter Hieronymus Bosch. This work is based on a poem of his own making titled "Kigi no Seimei (The Life of Trees)." The artist wanted to give expression to the fickleness of the heart and the ephemerality of things by combining in a single painting the contradictory ideas of reality and fiction, dream and waking, light and darkness.
(HASEGAWA Tamao)