Dutch artist Tymen Visser paints life in Tokyo

Artist Tymen Visser finds his inspiration in a simple appreciation of the every day. Although he was born in the Netherlands, since 2010 Tymen has lived in Tokyo. He became fascinated with the city after learning of his parents’ visits to Japan in the 70s, nearly a decade before he was born. Tymen continues to be interested and inspired by Japan’s relationship with his home country of Holland, and the historic influence of the Dutch on Japanese culture.

In places, Tymen’s characters are achingly Dutch — flower girls wearing white aprons and bibs paired with starched bonnets. Elsewhere, Tymen’s work circles around the duality found in Tokyo and its people — “old and a new, tranquilly and chaos, high-tech and analogue” — with characteristically Japanese scenes — railway workers wearing white gloves and helmets, or a “ball” of roaring tigers.

Tymen’s distinctive style, executed in primary colours with heavy black outlines to create bold, simplistic images manages to neatly knit the contrasting cultural influences together.

Of his work, Tymen says that he aims to “liberate the icon, leaving only the essentials”.