Ryoma Sakamoto

Art Description

Ryoma Sakamoto was a Japanese samurai and influential figure of the Bakumatsu and establishment of the Empire of Japan in the late Edo period. He was a low-ranking samurai from the Tosa Domain on Shikoku and became an active opponent of the Tokugawa Shogunate after the end of Japan’s sakoku isolationist policy.

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David X is a mixed media contemporary artist who creates striking paintings fusing Eastern and Western artistic traditions. David X started studying art when he was 7 at after-school art classes with peers nearly 3 times his age. This experience kick-started the mental and physical database of references that he continues to draw on for his paintings today.

David X was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2002 but was given life through a successful bone marrow transplant. In 2017, doctors detected a recurrence which left him with less than one year to live. David X felt compelled to create 365 inspirational paintings during the last year of his life. When tests eventually revealed that leukaemia had not returned, and his life was no longer threatened, he challenged himself to continue the paintings to fulfill his dream and inspire hope. His works are mainly portrait paintings of well-known figures, both historic and contemporary.