“In the fall of my seventeenth year, I was alone in the mountains mowing grass for the cows at a boarding school in the mountains. The wind was blowing pleasantly and clouds were slowly drifting across the sky. I was lying on my back, using the grass as a bed. Many insects gathered around my body, which was indescribably pleasant. 

After a while, a light suddenly appeared from the left side of my body, and when I saw the light, I was awakened. The sense of time and space disappeared, there were no boundaries to anything, and I felt that everything was one. There was no more separation between myself and the world. And I was filled with an omnipotent feeling of understanding everything at the same time, and I felt so happy that I could not imagine a better feeling of happiness. 

But think about it. Do boundaries exist in this world?
For me, the feeling I got from this experience seems to be true. 

When I paint, I tune in to the feeling of everything being one. Like tuning in to a radio channel. Motifs emerge from there. I match the composition, colours, and lines to that feeling.
And I want to make the vibrations coming out of the painting as strong as possible.”

– Tadashi Toyama