何事も無駄な経験はないという言葉がありますが、長沼慧さんこそその言葉通りの画家人生です。彼女はまだ十代の頃、画家になることを一度諦めて鍼灸師への道を進みました。学校で勉強して晴れて免許を取り、人々を癒す仕事をスタートしました。彼女の掌は温かく、指先の力はしっかりとすーっと受術者の患部に入り込む、そのような力を有しておりました。

ある日、世界一周を回る船の上で人々を癒す仕事をしないかとスカウトされ、若い彼女は希望に満ちて船中の人となりました。クルーズ船のなかの施術室の仕事です。今日と明日は違う海にいる、港々の風景は異なり、出帆のときの喜びと哀愁に満ちた雰囲気、様々な人種との関わり。20代の彼女にとって狭い日本から飛び出して多様な価値観に触れることは「本質とはなにか」を追求するうえで又とない経験だったことでしょう。

元々人とは違うところのある少女だったと言います。子供の頃病弱で人と同じことが出来なかったからこそ、何が人にとって一番大切なのか、という生きることの本質を考え続けました。

彼女はぶれません。まやかしや見せかけの価値観には騙されない、真実を見る「眼」があります。

世界一周の旅は、彼女に鍼灸の仕事を捨て、画家という道を選ばせるという運命を授けました。

鍼灸師が癒せるのはその時の一人だけです。しかし画家は作品の力で同時に何人でも、そしていつまでも人の魂を癒すことができます。彼女が選んだ特長的な画材である雲母は、人々に力を与えてくれるパワーストーンでもあります。

その雲母を用いて創り出される世界観は、人がこの世に生まれてきたことの意味を語っているように思えます。

年を取ればとるほど、その本質に気が付き彼女の絵の凄さが分かるのかもしれないと思います。（岡村）

There is a saying that nothing is a wasted experience, and Toshi Naganuma's life as a painter is just like that saying. When she was still in her teens, she gave up the idea of becoming a painter and became an acupuncturist. She studied at school, obtained her license, and began her career healing people. Her palms were warm and her fingertips had such power to firmly and smoothly enter the affected area of the recipient.

One day, she was recruited to work on a ship traveling around the world healing people, and she became a hopeful young woman. I work in a treatment room on a cruise ship. For a young woman in her twenties, being on a different sea today and tomorrow, seeing the different scenery at each port, the joyous and melancholy atmosphere at the time of setting sail, and interacting with people of different races, it was a unique experience for her to be out of her narrow Japanese environment and to be exposed to diverse values in her pursuit of "what is the true essence.

She says that she was originally a girl who was different from others. Because she was sickly as a child and could not do the same things as others, she kept thinking about the essence of life, what is the most important thing for people.

She never wavers. She has "eyes" that see the truth and is not fooled by deceit or pretense.

Her round-the-world trip has given her the destiny to abandon her career in acupuncture and moxibustion and choose the path of a painter.

An acupuncturist can only heal one person at a time. A painter, however, can heal the souls of any number of people at the same time and for any length of time through the power of her work. Mica, her chosen material for painting, is also a power stone that gives people strength.

The worldview created with mica seems to speak of the meaning of one's birth into this world.

I think that the older we get, the more we may realize the essence of it and understand the greatness of her paintings.

Okamura