The motifs that Yamaguchi uses in order to build her artistic vision is often inspired by Japanese art from the early 16th century to the late Edo period, but her style is also uniquely informed by a characteristic flatness and decorative tendencies, making her artistic interpretations truly one-of-a-kind and original. The characters she depicts are often blended into the design of kimono which are designed to be flat in perspective yet decorative, rendering her pieces extremely two-dimensional and similar to the lines found in?kare-san-sui?(traditional Japanese landscape garden). Her flat works emphasize lines as well as distort colors and shapes. While her works are certainly expressed in the form of planes, Yamaguchi does not seem to clearly define whether this expression takes place in two-dimensional or three-dimensional form, and freely steps over the conventional boundaries that set the two perspectives apart.

This is an etching that gives off a different feel, compared to Ai Yamaguchi’s normal style. It was completed at the end of 2006, and exhibited at ‘Gift, The Store’, located at Spiral Garden in Aoyama, Tokyo. It was only at the beginning of 2007 that Yamaguchi’s change in artistic direction and style began to show quite distinctly, at the solo exhibition she held at Mizuma Art Gallery.

Although the girl is only depicted in profile in the upper-left corner of the painting, it is through her black, flowing, lustrous hair that we are able to gain a sense of the strong, fierce beauty she possesses, rather than a frail ephemerality.

The red and black consist of two layers are printed by the?chin-colle’?technique, meaning that the image is transferred to a surface that is bonded to a heavier support during the printing process. At an overall level, the artist has also been conscientious in the application of her hand-coloured details, down to every bird sitting on the branch, situated in the right side of the painting.