Intensely attracted to light, its reflection onto different surfaces and its atmospheric presence and quality, Maya Ishii paints diverse forms of light in ways that exude silence and serenity. Her beautiful works are bound by an atmospheric glow of different degrees of sunlight, as well as, artificial light that stream into her paintings. She is an artist whose interest in sensorial stimulation varies from the music of the Beatles and Chopin; the writings of Antoine de Saint-Exupery and the works of Elliott Erwitt, which all contribute to her artistic production. Many of these artists' works are ethereal and optimistic and evoke sentimental feelings in the spectator, which she translates in her works.
The scene captured in Ishii's A Vision for Tomorrow Simple Stroke of Fate(Lot 1154) has an element of solitude and emptiness, which perhaps provided Ishii with a literal and abstract space to reflect. Far in the back of a long isle, a lonely figure walks toward the literal and metaphorical light at the end of a tunnel. The varying hues of blue balance the white light and its reflections beautifully, while maintaining the setting's cool and mysterious gloominess.
Humans and their interactions are not the central element to Ishii's works, but rather the environments in which people are found. As if her eyes were the shutter of a camera, as denoted by the peripheral view of a dramatically illuminated sky above a city in If You can Dream Fair Sky Will be Waiting for You (Lot 1153), we too witness an everyday scene. Once more the dark-blue shades of the city and the lighter ones of the sky are juxtaposed with hues of white, aspiring to ambulate a quality of light that each and everyone of us is familiar with and cherishes deeply: the warm light of the afternoon sun. Ishii's soft application of her pens and colour pencils are also reminiscent of Impressionist works for their colour palette and dazed perspective, as well as, treatment of light.