Giraffe 1985

Tsuruko Yamazaki made this painting, Giraffe, using oil on canvas, and it’s a playful dance of color and form. The way the giraffe emerges from these bold, horizontal stripes is kind of like a magic trick, right? I’m really drawn to how the paint is applied, it feels thin and almost translucent in places, allowing the layers underneath to peek through. There’s a real physicality to it, as if the paint was coaxed across the surface, each layer reacting to the one before. Take a look at the white dots over the colored blocks, almost like rain, or a screen. It reminds me of work by Gene Davis, where he played with optical effects using simple stripe formats. Yamazaki’s piece is like a jazz solo, it’s a conversation between intention and improvisation. It reminds us that art isn’t about having all the answers, it's about the questions we ask along the way.