Japan On Canvas

A Conversation with Artist Carl Randall

For most of us, a first visit to Japan comes with joyous sensory overload. We soak it up, drink it in, and do our best to capture it all on camera. Carl Randall has spent the last twenty years capturing it, instead, on canvas. He’s an award-winning figurative painter, who first went to Japan on a Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation scholarship back in 2003. He was my senpai: I went out in 2004.

We met up at the Foundation in London, scene of nail-biting interviews for the both of us more than two decades ago, to talk about what first got Carl interested in Japan, how he creates his art and some of the great Japanese artists of our day.

I hope you’ll enjoy the conversation, and the chance to see lots of Carl’s work along the way.

I haven’t covered visual culture much in this newsletter - mainly because I’m still finding out about it for myself! So if you have favourite artists or artworks, from any period of Japan’s history, let me know in the comments and I’ll post a collage of reader suggestions.

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