Statement
Colour is the essence of my life, it creates atmosphere, mood, and conveys my emotion.
When I was a child, I was always fascinated by looking for small glittering crystals in the school playground and admired them. The seven prismatic colours of the crystals shot reflection and consisted of small segment shapes of the hexagon that attracted me.
I believe that these elements naturally led me to take up mosaics as an essential medium to translate my creativity. It is a thrilling moment to select colours from various types of tesserae and to cut them one by one into specific shapes; these individual shapes and colours of tesserae reflect light, catching each other, creating harmony that also gives presence and life in my work of art.
My mosaic works are often inspired by street scenes in London, Japan, Paris, Italy and other destinations to which I travel to that present a captivating image of both natural and manmade objects-that will spark the imagination, are abstracted then refined, and developed to create beautiful patterns, designs, forms and colours to create my loved ones’ portraits, self portraits and scenery.
Topps Tiles Award
Ai Onishi was the national winner in the 2006 Topps Tiles Award for Achievement in Mosaic.
Ai’s piece is a 26cm x 33cm portrait of her daughter entitled Alice, which is hanging in the Topps Tiles corporate headquarters at Leicester.
Regional judge in the competition was David Tuhill MA RCA, who commented: “This is a stunning piece of work. Meticulous observation, choice of colour and size of tile have all been brought together to produce what I believe is one of the best pieces of work in the history of the competition”.