A Facebook group with almost 85,000 followers is enough for a young Japanese artist to sell her stone paintings. It rarely takes more than ten minutes for all of them to sell out. The artist is Akie Nakata. Within seconds of uploading an artwork’s image on the group, a customer would reach out to buy it. In Tokyo, her stone-paintings are sold at a gallery called Seizan Gallery. The other physical space with her works is the departmental store named Ginza Mitsukoshi. But it is the social media network Facebook that has let her build an audience beyond her homeland.
Her works have an expansive range. She paints simply on river stones that are palm-sized. On them, she paints with acrylic gouache paint. The prices of her artwork are vast— ranging from 300 dollars to 1500 dollars. She often paints images of animals— and almost every. Lions, tigers, birds, cats, peacocks, fist, polar bears, and elephants, among even more. She started painting back in 2010. Although, she has only found five stones that can occupy an octopus.
Akie Nakata On Her Process And Facebook-Success
Facebook has been a blessing to the artist. But she confessed that her inspiration comes from rocks rather than the animals she paints. She said that she paints any animal she can see “inside these rocks.” She noted that she follows the structure and bones that are shown on these stones. She said that she feels them inside the rocks, and she lets the animals “manifest” the stone’s surface.
Along with Facebook, she has several other accounts on other social media networks. They include Twitter and Instagram. She posts all her works on every forum, following the availability of her work online.
