Engulfed within a starry night, a girl and a cat on what appears to be a train are looking out a large window on the other side of which the moon is sinking leisurely into the water. The feeling is of stillness but not of loneliness. It seems that the characters are suspended in an alternate reality where time flows infinitesimally slowly, as if viscous. I can’t help but feel that we too will see the moon as soon as it finishes its descent through the waters and emerges on the other side, in its proper place in the sky of our reality.

Akira Kusaka is an illustrator and graphic designer based in Osaka, Japan. He works solely in Photoshop and when he is not drawing he plays the trombone in a two-man band called Repair. There is not much more about his work on the Internet, not even on his FB page https://www.facebook.com/akira.kk. Kusaka does not explain the meaning of his works for which I am grateful because it leaves room for our individual imaginations to create alternate realities within his.

To me, his works are like catching a glimpse of a parallel universe whose characters open a window into ours. Are these characters simply curious and non-interfering observers or the creators of the illusion we call reality? You decide.

P.S. The gallery does not represent Akira Kusaka but I enjoy his work and wanted to share it with you.

Down the Rabbit Hole