Leonardo da Vinci, obsessed with visions of the world collapsing in a deluge late in his life, kept drawing countless swirls of water eroding the earth. While delicate and still bold drawings done by Ugetsu resemble those of Leonardo’s, they would more likely impress us as phenomenon of the world in the making, rather than in the process of collapsing. The spiraling swirls, organic or inorganic, might as well be fundamental lines piercing through the natural world. When we are moved by the works of Ugetsu, we are literally experiencing a resonance between his lines and the lines piercing through our inner life.
Atsushi Tanikawa, art critic
レオナルド・ダ・ヴィンチは、その晩年、大洪水による世界の没落の幻想にとらえられ、大地を浸食する凄まじい水の渦を描き続けた。有月の繊細にして奔放なドローイングは、レオナルドのそれに似て、しかし世界の没落というよりはむしろ世界の生成を司る形象のように思われる。渦はまた螺旋でもあり、これは有機無機を問わず自然界を貫く根本的な線的形象かもしれないのである。有月の作品を前にして感動するとすれば、それは文字どおりわれわれの内なる生命を貫く線的形象が共鳴しているからにほかなるまい。 谷川渥（美学）
The concept of “Rimpa” has gone beyond the narrow and closed framework of the Japanese art history since the beginning of the 21st century and is now shared across the world. It is probably a synonym of “Mannerism” as Tatsuhiko Shibusawa once declared. The works of Ugetsu, artist of whirls, belong to the lineage of “unfinished Rimpa”, dating back to Ogata Korin’s search for irregular currents and whirls in his White Plum Blossoms.
Arsuhiko Ishiguro , Art and science critic
21世紀に入って琳派の概念は偏狭で自閉的な日本美術史の枠組みを超えて、いまや世界的に共有されつつある。それはおそらく、澁澤龍彦が喝破したように、「マニエリスム」と同義なのだ。
尾形光琳の『紅白梅図』の乱流・渦の探究にはじまり、現在まで、時間と国を超えて間歇的に現れる、その「未完の琳派」の系譜に、渦の絵師・有月の「画」はつらなっている」
石黒敦彦（ART ＆ SCIENCE）
Where does it start? And where does it end? Viewers would inevitably look for the start and the end of a dancing flow of brush strokes by Ugetsu. It is music played with black ink. It is a requiem. It is because of this tune that a life emerging from the line touches a chord.
Sakumi Hagiwara ( emeritus professor of Tama Art University)
どこから始まってどこで終わったのか？観る者は有月の流麗な筆の輪舞の中に、起点と終点を探してしまう。墨が音楽しているのだ。葬送曲なのだ。見えてくる線の生涯が切なく心を揺さぶるのは、その調べのためである。
萩原朔美（多摩美術大学名誉教授）
Ugetsu, an award-winning print maker who has received a number of prizes at international biennale exhibitions, found a fallen black bamboo in a forest one day. He brought it home and started painting with it. This episode reminds us of “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter” dating back to the Heian era, in which an old man finds a little girl in a glowing bamboo in a forest. When she grows up, she is taken by emissaries from the moon. The story is full of implications connecting humans with the space. Coincidentally, 有月 means “the moon exist”. Black shapes and figures emerging from the tip of a natural bamboo as he scratches paper with it connect the consciousness of urban dwellers to forests and the space where all things are in a state of flux. His works mark a departure from Japanese traditional black and white paintings. Traces of spiral movements painted on Japanese traditional washi and cloth also call up images of some works done in the name of inframince by Marcel Duchamp.
Kiyoshi Kusumi, Art Critic, Former editor-in chief of the art magazine Bijutu Techo
