"I actually felt that I would be gone in a few decades, but my works would be left behind, so I wanted to try bronze." - Yoshitomo Nara Yoshitomo Nara is undoubtedly one of the most popular Japanese artists in the art market in recent years. His works are solitarily but warm, simple yet moving, captivating with childlike but rebellious images, are highly sought after by collectors. Self-proclaimed as a minstrel, he has a warm heart full of revolt while simultaneously brimming with humanity. He likes to create while traveling. During creation he recalls his childhood, depicting touching life experiences. In 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake shock Japan and the whole world. At that time, Yoshitomo Nara’s sense of nothingness and trauma from the earthquake disaster areas in Japan also strike him like a tsunami. Even though he personally went to the earthquake -stricken areas to provide disaster relief, he was still unable to pick up his brush to paint again for the following six months. He followed the master photographer Nobuyoshi Araki to explore photography, and slowly regained his creativeness in the clay sculptures which seemed to have captured the warmth from the land. Different from the smooth and dreamy large-scale sculptures made of fiberglass in the 1990s, Yoshitomo Nara returned to clay sculptures which bring tactile feeling in 2011. Clay is a natural material without pretense, which allows him to find a dialogue with himself while sculpturing the clay. Clay sculpture inspired him to quest for the unlimited possibilities as medium for sculpture at that time. In his artistic creation, regardless of the media, whether painting or sculpture each have their own characteristics, while influencing mutually, strive to continuous improvement. Yoshitomo Nara once said that clay is a living material, and the feeling of kneading clay is sort of like experiencing the reality in life. The lines are gentle and rounded, and the clay is a natural material with no pretense, which enables him to communicate with himself during clay sculpture.