Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Naoto Hattori

Japanese artist Naoto Hattori imagines small fluffy animals with healthy doses of fantasy and some unnatural hybridization.The painted creatures often feature round heads and disproportionately large and reflective eyes.

At once adorable and unnervingly surreal, the fantastical creatures  seamlessly meld the myriad textures and colors found in nature into unusual hybrids.They’re often fluffy, equipped with horns in surprising spots, and bear eyes so inordinately large and glassy that they reflect full-scale landscapes.These acrylic paintings are small, typically measuring less than 3 inches by 3 inches when unframed.The artist’s style has been labeled as pop surrealist, but Hattori says it’s just what he sees in his mind.Of his work, he says: “My vision is like a dream, whether it’s a sweet dream, a nightmare, or just a trippy dream. I try to see what’s really going on in my mind, and that’s a practice to increase my awareness in stream-of-consciousness creativity. “The creatures in the paintings are avatars for entering the world of my imagination. The eyes feel like an entrance to the world of visionary memories.“I often paint a piece which visualizes myself as a hybrid creature entering the visionary world,” Hattori explains.More of Naoto Hattori’s wonderful surrealistic artworks can be found at https://www.naotohattori.com/.