Thumbelina hands down an art star at just a year old

RTHK

24-04-2025

Thumbelina hands down an art star at just a year old
A drawing is displayed on a sliding screen door at the home of 21-month-old artist Thumbelina. Photo: AFP
Gripping paintbrush and crayon, the artist known as Thumbelina splodges and splats with merry abandon, the one-year-old star of a Tokyo exhibition that goes on way past her bedtime.
Abstract paintings by the toddler are on sale for US$230 at her debut show at the hip gallery Decameron, tucked above a bar in the Kabukicho red-light district.
Thumbelina's vivid style is "babyish but mysteriously dexterous", gallery director – and matchmaker of her parents – Dan Isomura said.
"I thought, 'wow, these are legit artworks'," Isomura said, describing his first impression of her free-form creations.
Colourful smudges adorn tatami mats and tables at the 21-month-old's suburban home, where her mother patiently helps twist open paint tubes and squeeze them onto paper.
"I can see this rhythm in her movements and patterns... she knows what she's doing," said the evacuee from Ukraine in her 20s, asking to remain anonymous for privacy reasons.
As a fellow artist focusing on Japanese calligraphy, she is "jealous" of her daughter's first solo exhibition, she joked, though of course "I'm happy, as a mum".
Once she thought her daughter might help her with work, but now "I'm her assistant".
Thumbelina's mother left Ukraine's eastern Donbas region when war broke out in 2022.
She found herself on a plane to Japan, having consulted a website helping Ukrainians find housing worldwide.
A chance seating beside contemporary artist Isomura, who had only boarded because of two delayed flights, changed her life.
Amazed to learn they were both artists, the pair kept in touch, and later, through Isomura's introduction, she met her future husband.
"Dan is our angel, you know, like Cupid," she said.
The couple then had Thumbelina – not her real name – whose paintings inspired 32-year-old Isomura.
At first he had assumed the toddler was "scribbling randomly, like she was playing in the mud".
But when he saw Thumbelina in action, "she seemed to signal each time she considered her drawing complete," prompting her mother to give her a fresh sheet.
The fact that Thumbelina sometimes demands a specific colour, develops shapes from paint droplets and finishes voluntarily suggests a will at work, he said.
The exhibition, Isomura's first as director of Decameron, opened last month and runs until mid-May. (AFP)