Atelier Talk August 2026: A Cat I Love Died, and He Died Twice & A Few “For the First Time”s
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| Preparing a canvas under my furry friend’s watchful eye. |
A cat died.
A cat whom I had known almost since I moved to the US. He was a beautiful, large white cat with odd eyes named Catsley. He belonged to my friends in Philadelphia. I love them so much. I have so many memories with them—with Catsley and with my human friends. When I heard the news, it came as a response to a random question I had asked my friend about a window in a house they used to live in.
He went to heaven over Memorial Day weekend, at the end of May 2026. But I heard about it on August 3... and, to me, he suddenly left the earth on that day.
He had cancer, and it was Stage 4 when he was diagnosed in January, like my father. He lived a very long life for a cat, but I was starting to believe he would live forever with us because he never seemed any older than when I first met him.
I had been asking my friend about a window in the spacious studio apartment they used to live in. I once lived there temporarily in the summer of 2013, taking care of Catsley while my friends traveled. There was an experience I wanted to paint—the window, Catsley, and me.
He died once, he died twice, and he never died. I didn't see him pass away, and I didn't see his remains.
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Then I think about my bunny, who will have a shorter life than I will. Fuuko and Catsley were good friends. August 28 is my bunny's birthday, and she will turn six years old.
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Inside my atelier,
I have been preparing new canvases for new paintings over the past few weeks. For one of them, I am using an old canvas.
If you have never seen something in person, if you have never felt it in person, you don’t really know it. This has become normal—the new standard in today’s society—and I think it will become even more common with the rise of AI. But as an artist, I don’t want to be someone who claims to know something or explains it to others when I have only heard or read about it. Understanding something in your brain is one thing, but it means something different when you actually experience it. If you haven’t experienced something yourself, you can’t really say anything beyond what you have heard or read about it.
Castle in the Sky already showed me, when I was a child, that humans cannot live apart from the earth. I want my work to respect and live alongside the natural world and other people—to outlive me alongside them.
When you have never engaged with oil paint, or when you only use new canvases and have never worked with an old canvas, for instance, you don’t know the real thing.
Canvas breathes. The ground and paint can bring out the old materials attached to the canvas and bring them to the surface. It is like a living creature, in a way, no less than the cats, rabbits, and dogs around you.
Now it’s about the fifth or sixth layer of gesso—sanded and getting ready for the final layer soon. Meanwhile, I’m moving a canvas attached to the wall to another area.
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Music of the Month
Instead of this month’s reading, I thought I’d share the band I have been listening to repeatedly this month. They are a relatively new Japanese band called TiDE. TiDE is described as a rising four-piece Japanese indie-pop and funk-soul band formed in Tokyo in 2023.
I like them because, like some of the musicians I enjoy, they don’t just sing about love, sex, and betrayal, money, and fame—they sing about other things, too. But I haven’t read any of their lyrics yet, and even after listening to them so many times, I still don’t have a clear idea of what they are singing about. That is partly because I haven’t gotten bored with their songs.
In my atelier, I listen to music from my usual CD collection. This month, it has been Octave Minds.
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5 Group Exhibitions July to August
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| An image from exhibition High Visibility opening evening at GOCA Gallery |
For the first time in my life (1), I'm having five group exhibitions at the same time. All of the exhibitions are taking place in NYC—four of them in the Chelsea area and one in Maspeth, Queens. If you are in NYC, four exhibitions are still on views to visit.
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For the first time in my life (2) was deleted.
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For the first time in my life (3),
Sometime last month, after I posted my July atelier talk, someone (my friend) spotted, for the first time, the exact window I had used as a model for my window painting.
I felt butterflies in my stomach the moment I heard about it.
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For the first time in a while,
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| A Square Window with Geraniums by Natsumi Goldfish. Painting in a private collection. |
someone pointed out that my window paintings are not just intriguing and engaging, but also have a certain complexity to them. It’s not sadness per se, but probably something closer to melancholy.
This also gave me a similar sensation in my heart because it’s true, and I see that too. Although it’s not the first time people have described my work this way, I’m glad to hear it again and to know that my paintings still have that quality.
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Featured in Piece with Artist Magazine
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| Painting currently on view at Showroom Gallery/ Guerra Paint in Maspeth, Queens. |
A new article about my work has been published by Piece with Artist Magazine. I believe the magazine is based in Barcelona, Spain, and, as of today, has 132K followers on its official Instagram. They launched as a digital art publication in 2020 and started their independent print magazine in 2022.
I was included in their Curatorial Picks series, Chapter 4: Noah Becker, as a guest curator. In this article, the guest curator writes about two contemporary painters whom he feels carry something of Johannes Vermeer in their work.
I’m very happy to be featured in their publication. You can read the article here.
Also, Beautiful Bizarre Magazine just shared my painting Calling on their Instagram today, and a few days ago, ProblemChild Advisory shared another one of my works, After Hours (see here).
I’ve started to realize that these accounts don’t necessarily contact you to ask for permission before sharing your artwork on their platforms, which I didn’t know until they shared my work. I’m not offended—I have my own views on copyright that might be different from the majority—but it’s interesting. For me, at this moment, it was an unexpected and nice surprise.
Happy summer, everyone! Looking forward to talking to you here again soon.
Natsumi
