Mariko was born and raised in
Tokyo, Japan. After the second World War, the
Emperor of Japan was no longer thought of as a
god by the Japanese, and the people lost the way
to think about their lives. They began to think
that "big" is good and western culture is to be
emulated. In the schools, teachers no longer
taught the traditional Japanese art forms such
as Sumi or Iwaenogu. Instead they taught
watercolor and oil pastel.
When Mariko was a student of
the Musashino Art University in Tokyo, she
studied the art history of Europe, post
impressionism and art nouveau. Her teacher
mentioned that it was Japanese woodcuts that
aroused a serious interest in far eastern art
among western painters. These woodcuts began to
be imported to Paris soon after trade between
Japan and the West had been opened in 1854. They
remained in vogue for more than half a
century.
Mariko wanted to learn the
Japanese way to simplify. Soon after, she
knocked on the door of the master of Urasenge.
She learned Ikebana from this master as a way of
simplification and composition.
She was not interested in
Dadaism, Dali's surrealism, Eros, Gross and the
"nonsense" which was the art in Japan in the
1950's, 60's and 70's. She was disgusted and
exhausted from that kind of art. In the middle
of the 1970's, Mariko started to become
fascinated with American realism (called Super
realism in Japan).
After a stressful life as an
interior designer, she desired to move away from
the world of human complexities in a concrete
and plastic jungle, into a simpler world of
nature. In 1982, Mariko moved to Mendocino,
California from Tokyo. She started to paint
pictures more than ever before. Luckily she met
Bill Martin, an internationally known realism
painter, and from him she learned American
realism.
In 1999, Mariko, accompanied
by her two sons, returned to Japan for a visit
to her family. She says that she went through a
16-year time tunnel during that visit. Mariko
now feels that in her paintings Japanese spirit
meets American realism. She seeks people's
relaxed smiles as they look at her
paintings.
Mariko has been numerous solo
and group shows, receiving prizes and having
selected for the Winesong '95 poster.
She is represented in the
Northcoast Artists in Fort Bragg, the Mendocino
Art Center, and the Highlight Gallery in
Mendocino.
Click
here
to visit her other
website.