Japanese artist and designer Kayano Ushiyama inherited her love for art from her grandfather and father. She studied Textile Design at the Kuwasawa Dress Design School and worked in the fashion industry for twenty years as a tie designer. Her background has influenced her art visibly, as found in the textures, compositions, and ambiences of her paintings. Ushiyama uses gouache, pastels, watercolors, and other materials, such as newspaper and magazine clippings. She combines them with printed images of scanned pastel and acrylic gouache drawings, which she manipulates digitally and paints on with acrylic paint. The result is a lively pop melange with a striking graphic aesthetic, almost akin to those of advertising posters. Ushiyama’s intent is indeed to awaken the heart to feelings of joy and she mostly does so in her work. However, in a few instances, we may be taken by surprise after our first feeling of elation, as Ushiyama layers poignant headlines on distressing current events, creating powerful dissonance against a tapestry of bold color. She is a firm believer that art can change the world and she does so splash, after splash; word after word.
Ushiyama has exhibited extensively in Japan, Europe, and New York, both solo and collectively. She received the Collector's Vision International Art Award and the Power of Creativity Art Prize from Contemporary Curator Magazine in 2021. Ushiyama works as a graphic designer in Tokyo, where she likes to grow plants, cook, and complemplate her existence in the universe.
