Artist Q&A Artist Karen Shiozawa x Dr. Shuo Sue Hua
The University of Hong Kong, University Museum and Art Gallery

Dr.Shuo Sue Hua

Childhood Inspirations and Symbolic Motifs

Dr. Hua: Your early childhood in the Netherlands has had a lasting influence on your artistic sensibility. Symbols such as miniature figurines, the little girl, the little boy, stars, angels’ wings, Netherlandish wooden wind mills, pointed church steeples, and Lombard arches manifest beautifully in your artworks. Could you tell us more about these motifs and how your childhood experiences and memories may be connected to their inclusion?

©Karen Shiozawa Landscape of Netherlands

Shiozawa: Various motifs appear repeatedly in my work. However, rather than drawing them because I initially intend them to represent something, they are closer to landscapes that emerge in my memories and dreams. My paintings are less about trying to express something and more about trying to hold on to memories as they continuously flow through me, before they disappear. In that process, the blades of windmills, Western architectural forms, and the light inside churches become signposts for my soul to find its way home, like candles lit in the darkness. The small inhabitants are there to give a sense of the height of a child’s gaze and the scale of the world. I feel that they are still traveling endlessly through my paintings.

Artist training, teachers and inspirations

Dr. Hua: Born in Kanagawa in 1998, you spent formative childhood years in the Netherlands and graduated with a major in Fine Arts from Tokyo Zokei University Graduate School. Tracing your artistic journey, could you please share a few teachers or masters who have inspired your artistic intention and painterly practice?

Shiozawa: While I was still a student, at a time when the work I was creating felt as though it existed entirely within myself, I encountered the work of Giorgio de Chirico, Saul Leiter, Olafur Eliasson and Luis Barragan. Although they work in very different fields and through very different forms of expression, I think I was deeply influenced by the different flow of time within their work and by their sense of how we choose to look at the world.

There is also a picture-book artist, Yoh Shomei, whose books were part of my home when I was growing up, and I still collect his books today. I think his sense of spirituality has had a profound influence on me.

Note: Yoh Shomei is a Japanese picture-book artist and painter. Using expansive, quiet landscapes and delicate colours, he poetically depicts themes such as nature, life, and peace. His work has a spirituality that can quietly calm the heart beyond words.

Artist’s Studio

New works (2026)

Dr. Hua: Would you tell us about your new works created in 2026 and the inspirations behind?

Shiozawa: This year, I am holding two solo exhibitions, one of which is still to come.

For the solo exhibition held in June, I revisited places where I had actually lived during my childhood after traveling to the Netherlands and Belgium last year. This gave me an opportunity to look back more deeply on my own roots than I had in my previous work. When I encountered the atmosphere of the Netherlands again, I felt that I had found something like an axis of my practice in the diffused yellow light, reflections on the water, and the endlessly flat horizon.

For the new works to be shown in Hong Kong, I am focusing more directly on light itself as a phenomenon. I have been exploring where the physical phenomena of light that we can actually see intersect with an invisible, intrinsic light that exists within me. This process has created a space in which I can engage in a dialogue with the fluctuations of light within myself.

©Karen Shiozawa Landscape of Netherlands

Color Magician: Luminous palette and rhythmic textures

Dr. Hua: I admire how you layer luminous hues and employ rhythmic brushwork along with incising methods to evoke diffused light effects, transforming the canvas into an intricate space of light and sound. This approach truly actives viewers’ sensory experience and imaginations. Would you share your thoughts, consideration and practice in integrating light and sound within your art?

Shiozawa: I love looking at the sky and reflections on the surface of the water. When I think about why I am drawn to them, I feel it is because, as I look at them, my sense of time and the boundary between myself and the world gradually begin to blur.

I am drawn to moments when the sounds of wind, water, and nature, the changing colours of light, and the landscapes within my mind resonate with one another.

When I paint, I first fill the canvas with many different colours, then cover it with darker oil paint, and gradually scrape back into it to reveal the colours underneath. This process feels like first enclosing scattered memories of light, and then searching for the light again from within them. This technique is similar to the crayon scratch technique children often play with, but when I paint, I still feel as though I am drawing—almost as an extension of drawing.

Artist in Studio

Union of innocence, playfulness and intricacy

Dr. Hua: Your work is multi-layered, naturally encompassing depth that invites curiosity while at the same time gracefully embodying a captivating, whimsical sense of innocence, purity and playfulness. How do you achieve this balance? Do you plan out conceptual sketches or ideas in advance?

Shiozawa: I draw and record many different things in my daily life, and then put them away in a box. I do not immediately begin making something from them; instead, I spend more time letting different landscapes float through my mind. But they quickly flow away, so I draw and record the landscapes I do not want to forget.

I do not plan detailed sketches. At first, I experiment with different colors directly on the canvas. Once I have played with them for a while, I cover the surface with oil paint and then begin to imagine which images from my daily drawings I want to turn into a work. The imagery sometimes changes several times as I continue painting, while some works are completed relatively quickly. I always feel as though I am playing on the canvas, but there is one thing I consider especially important: not losing the impression of the light I wanted to create at the beginning. I think what matters is how honestly I can remain in contact with my inner voice while making the work.

The songs unsung

Artist in Studio

Dr. Hua: You mentioned hoping that the audience will capture their neglected sensations, often hidden within mundane daily life and the passage of time. Could you elaborate a bit more on this? What specific aspects would you like them to see, hear, imagine, and interpret through their own sensibilities after encountering your works?

Shiozawa: I often think about the question, “What can art do?” I still do not have a clear answer to it. I do not think I want to convey a particular message through my work. At first, I simply a child who painted for myself. It was a way of finding my own footing within a vast sea of information, almost like creating an album inside my mind. That feeling has not changed.

But as I had more opportunities to show my work to different people, I began hearing more often, “It’s my first time seeing your work, but it made me feel nostalgic.” It made me wonder what “nostalgia” really is, and whether that feeling might also hold something important for the person experiencing it.

There have also been times when someone asked me to create a work because they wanted to preserve a landscape associated with someone important to them through the light in my paintings, or when someone told me that looking at my work had brought back an important memory. This led me to think not only about the universal feeling of nostalgia, but also about why each of us has certain landscapes we do not want to forget.

And I return to the original question: What can art do? We encounter an enormous amount of information in our daily lives, but we are not consciously aware of everything we take in. Yet sometimes, quite suddenly, we remember a certain landscape and think, “Why do I still remember that?” I think that, within our vast accumulation of memories, we unconsciously recognize certain things as something precious.

Through my work, I want to bring those subtle sensations that have become buried in everyday life back to the surface. It is not about reproducing the past like a photograph or a record, but about making an overlooked sensation feel alive again through painting.

A landscape remains in our memory, while another disappears. And once a landscape has been remembered, how does it change the very way we look at the world afterward?

Boundless universe and nature as sanctuaries - on cosmic energy, universe and moon light

Artist in Studio

Dr. Hua: Do you feel more drawn to the expansive universe or the serene forests?

Shiozawa: I feel a sense of openness toward the outside in the universe, and a quiet inner light in the forest. They may seem separate, but I think they are connected within me. Until now, I have felt as though I were nurturing a small sapling within myself through my work, but recently I have begun thinking more about what lies beyond the galaxy. I have always had the feeling that I am exploring the boundaries between one thing and another.

Dr. Hua: I hope this question is not crossing any boundaries. Would you be comfortable sharing your perspective on spirituality and how it may be related to your worldview?

Shiozawa: I only have a small, simple wish. I feel as though I am searching for moments when I notice things that I would normally be unaware of in everyday life, or when I can feel a connection between myself and the world.

On art, tech and humanity

Karen Shiozawa, A Message from the Galaxy, 2026, 91 x 72.7 cm, Oil, acrylic, and alkyd resin on board

Dr. Hua: Could you please share your perspective on the relationship between art and technology in today’s society? Do you incorporate digital tools in your creative process? Additionally, what do you believe is the true meaning of art as humanity faces rapid changes brought about by science and technological transformations?

Shiozawa: That question brings me back to the question I mentioned earlier: “Why is art necessary?” I said earlier that I want viewers to capture the “overlooked sensations” that can become hidden in ordinary daily life and through the passage of time. I think this feeling is one of the reasons nostalgia can become meaningful, and I hope art can become a catalyst for that.

The more technology advances, the more I think the value of our ability to feel may actually increase. I believe art has the power to awaken sensations that exist before words, sensations that cannot be fully captured by efficiency or information.

For me, the act of creating something by hand may also be a way of making time to look again at what we have overlooked in everyday life. And as I said earlier, I do not think my paintings are meant to teach viewers something. I want to create a time and space in which viewers can notice the memories and sensations that are sleeping within them.

One year from now on

Artist in Studio

Dr. Hua: Where do you see yourself in one year? What are some of the projects or themes you would like to explore within this period of 12 months?

Shiozawa: It is difficult to imagine exactly where I will be one year from now, but at the moment I want to take the theme of “light,” which I have explored up to now, one step further.

I am currently interested in how I can bring the physical phenomena of light that exist in nature together with something like the invisible “light” that exists within human beings, within a single painting. I will present new works based on these ideas in my solo exhibition in Hong Kong.

Beyond that, I do not yet have a clear answer. I see my recent works not as a destination, but as a starting point for moving into the next phase. Through light as an entry point, I want to explore more deeply memory, perception, and the relationship between the inner world of the human being and the world outside.

A year from now, I may be working with a slightly different question from the one I have today. I want to accept that change and connect the new sensations and questions that emerge within me to my next works.

Dr. Hua: I love the imagery in your recent pieces. The boat on the canal, the firework, the little figurine(s), and the rabbit give it such a narrative, theatrical feel. Are these symbols drawn from personal memories, or do they represent specific fairytales or dream scene you are building/(re)imagining?

Shiozawa: They were simply standing there within the paintings. I often look back at a work after I have made it and realize, “Ah, so that is what it meant.” I am not depicting a specific place or story, but something more like a vast atmosphere—the spirituality that exists just before something begins.

I feel that there is a playful side of me and a more academically rigorous side coexisting within me. In truth, I think the paintings could work without the small figures and other small elements, but without them I somehow feel there is an invisible wall between the work and myself. They allow me to experience the world at a human scale, and they serve as an entrance into the painting.

I used to include many more elements, but recently my sensibility has become more distilled, and I increasingly reach moments during the process when I feel, in a good way, that perhaps I do not need to paint anything more. It is as though I am cutting out one precise, beautiful moment from an enormous film. Even though I am no longer filling the paintings with as many elements as before, I feel that the works have begun to tell their stories more eloquently.

KAREN SHIOZAWA: Twilight Planet