Atsushi Suwa is one of the leading realist artists in Japan, known for the intricate and minute details, a technique that reflects his effort to capture not only the external appearance but the nonrepresentational aspects of his subjects. Suwa was led to transcend representative realism through a deep understanding on the significance of perceiving a subject matter through the interaction between its physical context and psychological environments.

In Finger (Lot 2549) painted between 1996 and 1998, a rare portrait of a young Caucasian women seated lethargically on a chair, the light and soft shade of her hair and skin suggests her ennui. Compared with Untitled (Lot 2547) painted in 2002, featuring a portrait of young Asian women seated on the same chair, upright and rigid, we see the minute ways in which Suwa conveys his subjects' inner states externally. The minute detailing of her skin's texture and wispy black hair, vividly juxtaposed with the stillness of the girl herself, conveys the cold undertones of her body, as if she were under tremendous tension. Both women emit an eerie beauty, serene and mysterious, Suwa's extreme precision lending an otherworldly quality to the figures. Suwa's scrutiny of his subject matter is reminiscent of Lucian Freud's vivid portraits which conveyed psychology and character through the unadorned, visceral exactitude of his technique. As such, Suwa's works display his profound consideration of the psychosomatic state of his subject, equally capturing the artist's own subjective state generated during the very moment of observation.