Kikuhata planned to work on the Sea (1990–92) series immediately after completing Moonlight (1986–88), but then why did he instead paint Moon Palace (1988–89) and Way to Sea (1990–97) first? Kikuhata always envisioned Moonlight and Sea as complementary, namely as the moonlight he had experienced himself and the sea he imagined. Thinking about it, the origin of Moonlight, of course, is the Moon Palace, to which the artist added one further element, Way to Sea.

Kikuhata equated Moon Palace with the notion of “mother,” thus Moonlight is also linked to the image of the mother. Out of sixteen works made for Way to Sea, Kikuhata only kept four in their initial state, and altered, reworked or destroyed the others. The surviving works all share a gentle, calm aura. The notion of the sea not only represents the severe father for Kikuhata, but Way to Sea is also stipulated as a manifestation of the self. The father, who is distant in memory, is a father Kikuhata never spoke to in reality, represented here as a rough, warm current. On the back of the present work, Sea: Warm Current III, one notes the title Way to Sea, but crossed out with a single line. Yet it seems the artist, who envisions himself inside that current, also evokes the idea of an irrevocably cold and harsh current. In Sea: Warm Current VII and Sea: Warm Current VIII (both 1992), created about two years after the present work, two waves are shown using different colors, bearing heavily onto the viewer. It seems as if the artist tried coming to terms with the notion of the father through painting.

Kikuhata form the very beginning painted the father whom he barely knew from memory, and the mother based on actual experience. But why are they represented as ocean and sky, respectively? After the death of his father, the artist clearly seeks to reaffirm his own being. Father means sea, as his real father was a fisherman, and mother means sky, in an artistic play of associative substitution. One series of paintings is driven by the juxtaposition of father/mother, and in a further step, the contrast of the real father or mother with their images. Kikuhata’s colors appear as if overexposed to the sunlight, to the extend they turn into a sort of crust, though at the same time alluding to the foam of the sea taking over the surface of the work. The wave-like area covering the upper part of the painting suggests the spirit of the sea. These pigments representing the saltwater appear as if applied to the surface with a wooden paddle. They are interspersed with lines which seems to press down on them, or from behind which they come to the fore again. The viewer becomes part of the world of this painting where these wailing waves drags them in. Imbued with such power, the series Sea: Warm Current and Sea: Cold Current are memory paintings of a father image. The painter would attempt to overcome this gap between these warm and cold currents only in his next series, Chantey (1993–97).

Kikuhata Mokuma (avant-garde artist; 1935–2020)
Avant-garde artist born in Nagasaki Prefecture. Kikuhata graduated from the Fukuoka Chuo High School and participated in the art collective Kyushu-ha, which embraced an aggressive stance of bringing the “peripheries” of the art world into the “center.” While being part of the radical happening scene, Kikuhata also submitted his works to the Yomiuri Independent Art Exhibition. In 1962, he left the Kyushu-ha, centering on object-based work since 1969. In 1983, he introduced his painting series Ptolemaic Theory. Kikuhata has published various books and worked across a broad range of genres, his works including Slave Genealogy and Roulette.