In these 6 or 7 years, flower is the most important motif for Madoka Shibata's oil paintings. Although she is particular about flower, her motif is not nature morte but flower which is alive in nature by her side. Moreover, her paintings are different from the flower which was observed by the botanical viewpoint and depicted to details as French artist Pierre-Joseph Redouté or Japanese artist Hisui Sugiura. Also, there are the flower depicted like Botticelli's mythological allegory or Rousseau's paradise fantasy. Her very abstract painting is different thing either. Since bird which often appears in her painting, her painting can be called contemporary "Kachoga", the bird-and-flower genre in Chinese and Japanese painting.
Madoka Shibata creates her works by the consciousness of wishing to fill the whole of "field-of-view" with brilliant colors, rather than the motive to depicting the details deeper. For example, her concept is firmly consistent from "Pattern of Pink Flowers"(2006) to "Yellow of Distances"(2009), "Flowers in Line"(2010) and "Bloom, Blossom"(2012). Especially in latest three paintings, the shape of the flowers became masse and connect each other to expand their colors, like a daydream. The form of flowers looks like a magnetic field which attracts brilliant colors before appearing the graceful.
On the other hand, she also challenges to break out of her shell and make a new departure. For example, the paintings which expressing a infinite depth with vertical angle like "View of Flower"(2009), "Relation of Flowers"(2012) and "Seems to Go Upwards"(2013). Or the paintings expressing a flower which changed into a sunlight filtering through trees like "Light of Distances"(2012). However, there is already a pioneer of similar expression of these trials by Rieko Hidaka, O'Keefe, and Naofumi Maruyama. Therefore, I would not like her to stand still, but I wish her to continue pursuit and create to open up her own new field.

Haruo Sanda / Art Journalist