I paint the people who stay with me.
My work begins with memory — a photograph, a face, a moment I don't want to lose. I strip each portrait down to its essentials: a single black line for the contour, two dots for the eyes. What remains is not a likeness but a presence — the feeling of someone who mattered.
Trained as a graphic designer, I build each painting in reverse, laying the background down in acrylic before the figure arrives — the way a memory forms around a person before the details return. The result sits between cartoon and portrait, between pop and intimacy: simple enough to meet you in an instant, quiet enough to hold a real life inside it.
I paint to make my own reality visible — the people who shape it, and the distance between where we were and where we are.
Rooo Lou was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1988, and lives and works in Tokyo. He began by taking commissioned portraits through Instagram, and has since exhibited and collaborated widely, including 25th-anniversary goods for Asian Kung-Fu Generation (2021).
A graphic-design background shapes the method: acrylic backgrounds are laid first, then the figure — outline and two dots for eyes. Minimal marks carry maximal feeling, a portrait reduced to its emotional core.
Rooo Lou is represented by Gary&Kenny Inc. for North America. For acquisitions, commissions, press or collaboration, please get in touch.
New paintings, limited editions and process — first look on Instagram.