Water does not always move with a fixed direction. POND 02 — Drift abstracts a slow shift within a quiet pond—a movement that changes position without urgency. Vermilion, charcoal, and pale ivory marks suggest rather than describe a koi. The stones are deliberately asymmetrical, each carrying a different visual weight. Nothing follows a rigid path. The composition is shaped by slight deviation, softness, and drift. The work holds that gentle movement inside a wide field of stillness. SERIES — POND POND abstracts the presence of nishikigoi and pond stones into movement, stillness, water, and negative space (ma). The fish are not treated as literal subjects. Instead, vermilion, charcoal, ivory, translucent washes, and fine flowing lines suggest their movement through water. Stones shift between dark, pale, sharp-edged, softened, and partially dissolved forms. The open ivory field functions as water itself. POND is built around the tension between two states: motion and stillness. The visual center of each work is not the koi or the stones, but the quiet interval between them. ABOUT RITSUKO NISHIMURA Ritsuko Nishimura works with negative space, light, air, silence, and the moment just before a form disappears. Rather than asking how much more can be added, her work focuses on where to stop. Empty space is not treated as absence, but as a place where light, time, and distance can exist. Starting from recognizable motifs, she reduces them into color, texture, gesture, and interval—leaving room for each viewer to enter the work through their own perception.