Maya Makino

b. 1980, Japanese

Maya Makino aims to capture and preserve the experience of witnessing scenes from the past, resulting from an involuntary awareness of sensations and appearing momentarily before her eyes. Think of the quietness of the night, the sound of the rain, or the scent of a flower. These fragments trigger childhood memories, followed by an experience in which those memories flash rapidly and are volatile through our minds before they disappear instantly, just as the artist becomes aware of these sights and senses.

Arguably one of the most essential aspects of Makino’s painterly practice is the intensity of color. She uses a single dye to achieve a range of indigo blue hues, working on wooden panels primed with a traditional gesso using gofun—also known as shell lime. By doing so, the Japanese artist can create subtle textures and reliefs on her surface before soaking the panel with an intense indigo dye. The indigo does not sit on top of its surface; it penetrates the support, parallel with how she penetrates the mind in her pursuit of remembering, capturing, and preserving feelings or moments. For Makino, painting is not only a tour de force of a specific medium on a particular surface. She approaches it as a phenomenon emerging from deep within the support, as the color impels the painting to transcend its material aspects.

Born in 1980 in Kanagawa, Japan, Makino achieved her MFA in Painting at the Tokyo University of the Arts in 2009. Makino nationally exhibited at renowned institutions, such as the University Art Museum, Tokyo (JP) in 2017; the Fujisawa Art Space, Kanagawa (JP) in 2016; the Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo (JP) in 2015; and the Fuchu Art Museum, Tokyo (JP) in 2012. Her works are featured in international private collections and national public collections, encompassing the Saiho-Ji Temple, Tokyo (JP); the Collection Isuzu Motors (JP); the collection of St. Regis Osaka (JP); the collection Minakami, Gunma Prefecture (JP); and the collection of the University Art Museum, Tokyo (JP).

Maya Makino is based in Tokyo, Japan.

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