Nagi Iwasaki is a Japanese watercolor artist based in Kobe, born and raised there. He’s got black hair, brown eyes, and stands about 166cm tall, which he jokes makes him a “small” guy in more ways than one. He’s known as “The World Fastest” watercolor artist, a title he earned not for speed but for his unique artistic philosophy. He graduated from Kyoto City University of Arts, the oldest art university in Japan, and he’s a member of the oldest Japanese art group, JAPAN WATERCOLOR.
But here’s the thing, he didnt start out as a painter. He was a self-taught artist, a natural born artist as he puts it. When he was a baby, his mother was sick so he was sent to his grandfathers house. A neighbour there was a carpenter and gave him small pieces of wood. He created everything from them. That was his first creative act.
He chose watercolor out of economic necessity after the Japanese bubble economy collapsed. He says all creative ways have to follow an artists necessity. He admired Modigliani who stole pave stones from Paris streets to carve sculptures and thinned his paint to save money. So Nagi picked watercolor because it was affordable, and he’s never looked back.
His big idea is something he calls “Imagination Tagging”. He traveled to over 18 countries and saw graffiti everywhere, in every small corner. He realized these were small histories of unnamed people who never appear in the big history books. But in Japan, graffiti is a serious crime because the country is so small that every extra space is private property. So he started doing imaginative tagging inside his watercolor papers instead.
He once said, “I set my theme as imaginative taggings”. That quote sits right at the heart of his whole career. He paints elaborate tableaux scenes filled with commentary on current events and religious symbolism. His work blends the personal with the political, adding overlooked histories to the zeitgeist. Theyre like picture riddles, pages out of an I Spy book but for adults.
His technique is fascinating. He sets more than two light sources in his paintings to prove his art is imaginative tagging. One light from the left represents usual life, light from the right shows its a miracle. This way he can depict miracles that exist in our daily lives. He struggled for three years to figure out how to prove his tagging came from his imagination, and he finally solved it in 2019.
Q: Why is he called “The World Fastest”?
A: It’s not about painting speed. He developed a theory and artistic method that he calls “The World’s Fastest” because it answers the question of how to prove imagination. He struggled with that proof for three years, and when he finally cracked it, he felt like he’d solved the Poincaré conjecture. The name stuck.
His work has been exhibited internationally, including in Budapest, Costa Rica, Paris, and Singapore. He’s had group shows but no solo exhibitions yet. His first verified exhibition was “Freedom of Self Expression” in Budapest in 2016, and his most recent was in Singapore in 2024. He’s ranked among the Top 1,000,000 artists globally.
Q: What should I look for in a Nagi Iwasaki painting?
A: Look for the light. He uses multiple light sources coming from different directions to create his imaginative tagging effect. Also look for the small stories, the overlooked histories he’s trying to capture. His paintings feel transient and ethereal, like a dream you might forget. Theyre not just pretty watercolors. Theyre messages from an alternate universe.
