ARTIST STATEMENT
I seek to translate my ongoing exploration of race, femininity, familial stories, and Inari the fox spirit, into my art making. The motif of foxes and spirituality recurs throughout my work, serving as a central metaphor for mystery, an oracular presence who I feel is both protecting me and testing me. I shift my focus inward, exploring painting as a means of capturing my own intangible feelings, those that exist beyond floating visions and evanescent thoughts that fleet away before I can grasp onto it.
When I finally tune in, find a frequency, focus my thinking, I’m brought to beings jumping around me, making sounds, circling above, watching me curiously to see how I’ll react. At that moment, in attempt to pin down and translate deep presence and immersion into tangible images, I experiment these trickster figures. The blurred lines between reality and perception becomes a spiritual episode. “Kitsune” as a whole is a body of work that moves in a circular movement and captures the essence of appreciation, transformation, and fluidly. I feel it so deeply, and I romanticize it when the whole world goes silent for a second. Breathing in the slightly tainted Chicago air feeling like it’s the freshest in the world. Bells jingling in the end of my brain, hearing the slight taps of the paws of these foxes dashing around. Ultimately, I want these foxes to exist beyond my world, to slip into yours, to float in your headspace, to make you question and wander.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Fumika Okumura is a Japanese intuitive painter based in Chicago, currently studying fine arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As a first-generation child raised in the United States, her work is rooted in a deep yearning for cultural connection and grounding. More precisely, the spiritual energy and intensity of the enigmatic presence of Inari, the fox spirit from Japanese folklore. Her paintings are immersive, intuitive responses to intangible emotions. Through her art, she hopes these spirits will wander beyond her canvas and into the minds of others, inspiring curiosity, wonder, and perhaps connection.
© Fumika Okumura