Hideyuki Sobue is a Japanese artist living and working in the Lake District where this project is based. This exhibition, supported by Arts Council England, embodies a series of portraits of people he has come to know personally, with each work designed to be exhibited in diptychs: one half featuring the portrait, the other a carpet of fallen leaves observed in the area. The leaves also symbolize the vast majority of people, often neglected, who have never been - and will never be - the subject of a portrait and thus the works become a metaphoric juxtaposition.

The project is completed in the unique brush hatching technique he has created and developed over the past decade, using Japanese sumi ink and acrylic inspired by the classic method of disegno, established in the Florentine School during the Renaissance, in combination with neurological studies, which show that the human visual brain perceives objects predominantly by oriented lines. With this technique, he attempts to embody how humans see when exploring the uniqueness of humanity with their creativity, by combining artistic and cultural heritage from both East and West, ideological legacy and contemporary understanding.

Hideyuki Sobue was born in 1965 in Aichi, Japan, and grew up in an orphanage. He graduated from Osaka University of Arts on a scholarship. Selected exhibitions include National Open Art Competition (Chichester), Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (Birmingham), 20/21 International Art Fair (London), The Lake Artists Society (Cumbria), The Verrocchio Arts Centre (Italy) and Rydal Mount (Cumbria). After being awarded the Peter Tyson Award at the Lake Artists Society (2006), Hideyuki was elected member of the society (2008) and is serving as a council member (2011-13). This art project, The Way I See, has been awarded a grant by Arts Council England (2013).