Artist Etsuko Taniguchi’s series of paintings captures the Japanese capital Tokyo at night.
At a glance, her works resemble blurry photographs of the metropolis taken in the hours after sunset—when the luminescence of fluorescent lights stand out most against the pitch-black darkness, and make up the vague outlines of buildings, fireworks and the streets.
In actual fact, her paintings were created using a technique called “Togidashi”—where layers of different colored acrylic paint are applied one after another, and then scraped away to give the painting an ephemeral effect.
“The subject that was once buried in the darkness begins to assert its existence from attaining this ‘Light’,” she said, according to Spoon & Tamago.
[via Spoon & Tamago]