Ryuku Otsuka and the gentleness of time

Ryuku left Japan at the age of 15 to pursue his studies in the United States. He spent three years in Florida and then a year in New York, before moving to France to study digital art at Parsons Paris.

After graduating, he gained extensive professional experience as a freelancer. But over the years, a question imposed itself: that of his identity. Having left his country at a very young age, he reached a point where he could no longer speak his mother tongue with his family. This distance sparked a desire to rediscover his culture. He began connecting with various Japanese communities in Paris and gradually rediscovered traditions such as sake, cuisine, and the tea ceremony. It was during this period of reconnection that he truly discovered his artistic path.

Ryuku has always drawn. Even as a child, he loved to doodle in the corners of his notebooks. His time at art school allowed him to explore different fields—graphic design, illustration, and tattooing. But it was painting that ultimately captured his attention. Today, he chooses to work with a traditional Japanese technique called Nihonga. Pigments are mixed with animal glue, known as nikawa, and then applied to washi paper or silk. It is a demanding technique that requires time and patience.

His inspirations draw from this same Japanese pictorial tradition: he cites, among others, Jakuchu Ito and Eitoku Kano, two masters of classical Japanese painting, alongside the French painter Henri Rousseau, whose naive and meticulous world resonates with his own quest for simplicity.

For Ryuku, this choice goes beyond a simple aesthetic question. It is part of a broader reflection on "slow art." In a world where everything seems to move ever faster, the artist wishes to take the time to do things differently—to create, to observe, and to seek a quality that our era sometimes tends to forget. On his website, he describes Nihonga as a practice founded on patience and manual labor, the opposite of the speed and automation that increasingly characterize our daily lives.

In his paintings, Ryuku notably depicts pigeons and flowers—two subjects that might seem ordinary, almost mundane. Yet, that is precisely what interests him. We see them everywhere; we cross paths with them every day. But do we really see them? "The pigeon and the flower push me to take my time and appreciate life," he confesses.

Through his painting, Ryuku invites us to slow down enough to notice their beauty. His pigeons thus become much more than simple urban birds; his flowers are no longer just decorative elements. They become invitations to observe, to appreciate, and to be present. His work reminds us that beauty is not necessarily found where we look for something exceptional; it can be found right in front of us.

Ryuku's work echoes an era saturated with images, information, and demands. While our screens push us to scroll through content ever faster, he chooses the opposite: to stop. Painting slowly thus becomes a way to resist this acceleration. His works take the time necessary to exist, and they ask us, in turn, to take the time to look at them.

"Appreciating the little things in life." This is the phrase that guides Ryuku every day, a philosophy found in every one of his paintings—observing the world with more attention, finding value in what surrounds us, and not letting speed make us miss the essentials.

With his Nihonga, Ryuku Otsuka is ultimately not just seeking to paint the world around him. He is inviting us to look at it differently.