Last night, there was a TV show about Kazuo Akasaki, an artist who makes amazing paintings using fallen leaves. Here’s an excerpt from the program:

The excerpt starts with a dramatization of the time when Akasaki had just begun his career as an artist. Despite the fact that his household was in major debt and they had angry loan sharks banging on their doors, Akasaki continued to work on his art and his family supported him. When all hope seemed lost, they received a phone call informing them that the following painting had been awarded the “Salon de Paris” at the 1986 Fine-arts Paris Exhibition of Japan:

The prize launched Akasaki’s successful art career, allowing him to make large sums of money from the sale of his leaf paintings. He also wrote several instructional books on his art form and opened a school to teach people his techniques. The TV program shows us several examples of Akasaki’s amazing works, including a large painting that took him half a year to complete. The painting is of a magician conjuring up flying meat and fish, which draw the attention of a cat and dog sitting next to him. Just like all of Akasaki’s works it is constructed entirely of leaves, with no artificial coloring added.

Following the program, I did some searching for his works on the net and found the following leaf paintings, which I believe were all created by Akasaki [click to view larger images]:

Want to see more examples of leaf artwork? Check out this gallery, as well as this gallery of 2008 Olympic-themed works.