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For me, painting is an ever-changing life form. Through life experiences, you keep reinventing yourself and as you transform, your painting style transforms, too.
Born in Japan, I was trained in traditional Japanese painting at an art university in Tokyo. The experience at the university left me somewhat disappointed, as I did not find the highly structured academic training an effective outlet for my creativity.
After graduation I left Japan and spent the following 20 years in Europe and US working as a painting conservator of western paintings. As one thing lead to another, in 2007, I ended up as an expat wife in Moscow, Russia, where I rediscovered the joy of painting. This time as an adult who had spent the half of her life as a perpetual foreigner, I found painting a very effective emotional outlet.
Since I left my native country 22 years ago I have become sort of a hybrid of Japanese and American. My paintings are a reflection of myself. I combine western painting techniques that I leaned through painting conservation and traditional Japanese motifs that I grew up with.
Almost all of my paintings carry some symbols of my personal mythology. For example, you might notice that I often insert circles in my compositions. The circle represents one’s being, which is the ultimate mystery: when you draw a circle, the beginning of the line becomes the end of it. It means, any point of the circle can be the beginning AND the ending. In Zen Buddhism, your life is also a collection of these moments of beginnings and endings, which is, in fact, eternity.
Although many of my paintings contain Japanese symbolism and motifs, I don’t limit myself to the Japanese theme. Basically I paint what pleases me at any given moment and I use my own paintings as a tool for self-reflection. I can observe how I evolve and become a different person on the everyday basis as I paint.
My art works are mainly acrylic on linen canvas. Acrylic is a versatile material and I enjoy getting many different effects by texturing and layering.
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