The series began in 2021, when I found on the street four beautiful frames in perfect condition, each carrying one of the Chinese Hanzi or Japanese Kanji for the four seasons: Spring 春, Summer 夏, Autumn 秋, Winter 冬. Initially, I was struck more by the beauty of the Chinese and Japanese language than by the symbols themselves, and I thought I could simply use the frames for some of my originals. But once I flipped the paper, everything changed. That was the inspiration, the eureka, the epiphany: everything became the opposite. I started using colours inspired by the opposite season, retraced the symbols as they appeared mirrored, spelled the names of the seasons backwards, and built new compositions around older works. In this way, the frames became part of a series made from reversal, reflection, and transformation. Inside them I placed four of my older original works: one from 2017, two from 2018, and one from 2019.

This artwork is called retniW, the mirrored and reversed form of Winter.

Inside this piece I placed one of my works inspired by the Kodama spirits, figures that have always fascinated me because they seem to embody a raw and unfiltered honesty. What draws me to them is their double nature: they can guide the lost, but they also confront you with truths that are not always easy to accept. In that sense, they feel very close to life itself. Moving through life often resembles wandering through an unfamiliar forest, not fully knowing what lies ahead, and the Kodama become symbols of that mystery, that guidance, and that confrontation.

In my work, the Kodama are never just decorative presences. They carry an atmosphere of truth, mystery, and ancient wisdom. Whether playful or solemn, they seem to observe rather than explain. They remind us that nature, like existence, can be both beautiful and unforgiving. That is what makes them so powerful to me and why they entered my tattoo language as well.

So in retniW, the Kodama become more than characters. They become a symbol of inner navigation, of fragile guidance, and of the strange honesty that sometimes only silence, nature, or solitude can reveal. Like the whole series, this work is built on reversal and layered meaning, but here that transformation meets the spiritual presence of the forest. The result is an image that feels suspended between memory, symbol, and talisman, something ancient carried into a new form.

Those Kodamas are the first ones I ever drew.