Artist Statement
The Kawaii Monsters
Illustration and painting are noble. However, I feel that illustration has been treated slipshod because it does not directly relate to people’s life-threatening conditions, such as medical treatment and foodstuffs. However, I am certain that illustration helps to enrich the lives of people. Moreover, the power of illustration can convey the problems faced by the planet.
Humans have destroyed nature and made many animals extinct while in pursuit of profit and ego throughout our long history. Humans need to rethink their attitude over again. Every one of us has to act as environment conservation for our future.
My characters are the embodiment of animals. They are the spirit of animals that have been abused or made extinct by deforestation as a result of human actions. My characters show how the purity of animals has transformed into cute monsters to show they want to be loved by humans. They have human-like eyes and mouths to express that they want to be close to humans, even for just a short time.
I developed these illustrations to be applied to a sustainable water bottle. Aligning my illustration with a sustainable product puts my message into action, directly impacting the conservation of nature. For this reason, I aimed to create designs that the people would want to use the bottles. It is an issue that using bottles penetrates people naturally. I hope people will be inspired to adopt a reusable bottle because of the cute animal monsters featured on my illustrated bottle.