Hiroyuki Doi

By: Joseph Jacobs

March 2007

Hiroyuki Doi is a 60-year-old self-taught artist based in Tokyo who began creating obsessive

Hiroyuki Doi, "Untitled," 2006, ink on paper.

drawings consisting of thousands of circles of varying sizes after the death of his younger brother two decades ago. These drawings serve as therapy for Doi: “By drawing, I started to feel relief,” he explains. “At some point I started to feel that something other than myself allowed me to draw these works. By drawing circles, I feel I am alive and existing in the cosmos.”

Doi, who makes his living by teaching cooking, draws after work and goes into a trance as he begins his compulsive circle- making, in effect being mentally elevated to some higher plane that he perceives as universal. The results are haunting organic abstractions of foam, clouds or microscopic cells, weather or planetary forms, all suggesting primordial creation or growth. The range of tones in Doi’s drawings, from pale gray to jet black, is breathtaking and powerful. He was discovered by New York dealer Phyllis Kind several years ago and came to the art world’s attention in 2005–06, when his work was included in the American Folk Art Museum exhibition “Obsessive Drawing.”