She speaks of an inner landscape image. Her paintings are not depictions of specific geographical locations. Ikemura develops her landscape paintings from an imagination into a kind of cosmic landscape, with the body often forming the starting point. According to Ikemura's perception, the body should correspond to the cosmos of painting. In her ‘Floating Faces’ series, Leiko Ikemura already visualises the flowing transition between worlds. Extending this theme, the reclining head joins the landscape plane, whereby the landscape also contains a certain physicality for the artist as well as the longing for a fusion of man and nature.

In the first picture of the three-part cycle ‘Kaiserstuhl’ from 2013, anthropomorphic forms can be recognised on the right-hand edge of the picture, which can be interpreted as the face and upper body of a female figure. The result is a flowing transition into a formation of hills in front of a hazy blue lake surface. The idea of the transitory, which is a further characteristic of Ikemura's art, is also visualised in this triptych in the transition of the landscape motifs from painting to painting.

Leiko Ikemura grew up as a child by the sea in Japan. She had an intimate, intense relationship with the sea and the landscapes of Japan, which characterised her later work. Ikemura, who initially studied Spanish literature in Osaka, emigrated to Spain in 1972. She travelled Europe and moved to Switzerland in 1979. The artist has lived in Germany since the early 1980s.

Leiko Ikemura's art reveals itself in many ways as a dichotomy of the two continents, which have characterised the artist's biography. Her painting technique, which is influenced by calligraphy and Far Eastern watercolour art, her motifs and also natural philosophy and pantheism, which can be linked to her pictorial themes, reveal the influences of Japanese culture. In an interview with Erika Költzsch in 2012, Ikemura described her relationship to the Swiss landscape. ‘Switzerland is framed by mountains and Japan is framed by the sea. The inner life in the mountainous country of Switzerland is like a reflection of Japan. In Switzerland, the water is inside and around it are the mountains, while the island of Japan works the other way round. It is precisely this reversal that I want to thematise in my pictures.’ This picture puzzle can also be recognised in Ikemura's triptych ‘Kaiserstuhl’. It is precisely through the experience of being a foreigner in another culture and immersing herself in Western culture that the artist becomes aware of her cultural homeland. In her mature work, she hints at her own synthesis of both worlds.