HANDKERCHIEF - Living with Cats -

Ordinary days with a cat, painted onto linen. Living with Cats, by the painter Misato Ogihara A cat curled up on a chair. A cat settled into a box, watching the street. A home to come back to, a warm light left on, and a small creature nearby. This series prints watercolors by the painter Misato Ogihara onto fog linen work's linen, painted around the theme of living with cats. What she paints is never a special occasion - only an ordinary day. Which is exactly why it starts to look like your own. Handkerchief - Living with Cats Small paintings are scattered across a single square of linen. A cat in a green box, a cat asleep on a chair, a house facing the street, a single fir tree, a pair of shoes left where they came off. None of them shout, and the space around them is left open, so the face of the cloth changes with how you fold it. Cats showing today, the house tomorrow. Every time you pull it out of a pocket it is a slightly different piece. The fabric is the fine, lightweight Lithuanian linen fog linen work uses for handkerchiefs and clothing. Thin and quick to dry, crisp when new, softening every time you wash it. A handkerchief, and just as easily a cloth to wrap something you care about. Beside the paintings run short lines of English, chosen by Ogihara herself - words to let you a little further into the world of the picture. Misato Ogihara Painter and illustrator. After studying design at Tama Art University, she worked in stage design, painting backdrops for opera and ballet. Today she works across book covers, advertising and packaging, moving between studios in Tokyo and Yamanashi. If you have ever picked up a translated novel in a bookshop because the cover drew you in, there is a fair chance it was one of hers. She has lived with cats since childhood, and with birds, goats and dogs along the way. Put a living creature into a scene, she says, and warmth appears in it. Cats, dogs, birds and people stand quietly in her paintings. Some of the cats in this series were drawn from cats she knows. About fog linen work A Tokyo brand based in Shimokitazawa, making linen goods around the idea of everyday use. Every color, pattern and design is their own, and the linen is woven and sewn at a partner factory in Lithuania. Linen is one of the toughest of the natural fibers, and one of the most absorbent and quickest to dry. Use it every day, put it through the machine, hang it out in the sun. It only gets better the more you wash it. Nothing about it is loud, and yet a room settles slightly with one in it. It sits naturally alongside the quiet, well-made things &CAT looks for.