Kentaro Sato

Kentaro Sato was born and raised in Ishinomaki, a small northeastern town ravaged by the ocean waves on 3.11.11. It is not surprising, then, that the young artist’s raison d‘être is entwined with the expression of nature as a source of not only sublime beauty, but as a brute force that demands an almost solemn reverence. In the words of Kierkegaard, it is in “fear and trembling” that Sato approaches his subject matter, juxtaposed with a sense of awe and inspiration that water evokes. The adoration of nature is perhaps an inherently Japanese trait, as for millennia our forefathers had found in nature a polytheistic world brimming with the gods in every facet of our environs – in the mountains and in our forests, in the oceans and in the skies above. Sato is no different. But rather than simply limning the beauty of nature in innocent landscapes, Sato creates soaring odes to the power of nature through the use of the elemental, focusing on water itself as not only his greatest muse, but as the principal instrument for his paintings.

Direction: Gakuto TANO

Camera: Yuma Maehara
Gakuto Tano

Editing: Gakuto TANO

Production: A Lighthouse called Kanata