Perfect Blue is one of my favorite films of all time, so I wanted to create a painting that felt like a small tribute to it. I take a lot of inspiration from Satoshi Kon’s work, and especially from Perfect Blue’s themes of surrealism, identity and paranoia.
For this piece, I wanted to show the two versions of Mima interacting with each other. The idea I settled on was Mima kissing her own reflection and seeing her alternate reality self in the mirror. It is an action that could easily read as narcissistic, but I wanted the original Mima to feel vulnerable and almost helpless in that moment, as if she was being drawn into the interaction rather than controlling it.
I used myself as a reference while working on the painting, which helped me figure out the pose and expression. Even so, this piece was quite challenging to get right, especially because I wanted it to carry both intimacy and unease at the same time. It ended up becoming a very personal piece for me, both as a painting and as a way of responding to a film that has influenced me deeply.
