Since beginning Equivocal Landscape in 1998, I have made one drawing each day in a 5.9-by-8.5-inch sketchbook using a 0.2-mm black micro-pigment ink pen. These drawings began as visual impressions, derived from memories of each day, in the form of a tree whose Chinese ideograph is part of my surname, Hayashi. The sketchbooks now number more than 100 volumes. The 72 drawings in each sketchbook appear only on the recto, accompanied by brief numbers and color annotations on the verso. The pages have no internal narrative sequence, though time passes through them chronologically. As of May 2026, I am working on Sketchbook Vol. 123.

Reading Never Let Me Go intensified my interest in memory and in how one perceives oneself through recollection rather than direct observation. Through this process, I have become interested in the instability of memory and in the distance between lived experience and its reconstruction. Each drawing serves as a notation of the day, in which memories gradually dissolve into lines, dots, and accumulated marks.

Equivocal Landscape has also become the basis for other projects, including Corrections, Volatile Landscape, and Landscape of the Day. In these works, I extend the drawings through additional elements such as color, language, shape, texture, and photographic images.

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Title: e.l. 94:13 (New York: light green: 7.21.20)
The drawing appears on the 13th recto of Sketchbook Vol. 94 and was made in New York on July 21, 2020. “Light green” is a color annotation representing the mood of the day, recorded on the corresponding verso.

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