Yasuyo Maruyama
Artsy Page
About the Artist
Yasuyo Maruyama was born in Kanagawa, Japan and currently lives and works in Texas.
She received her MFA in 2011 and BFA (Painting) in 2009 from Tokyo Zokei University in Tokyo, Japan. She has exhibited in New York, Houston, Dallas, Korea, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Los Angeles and has also won several awards and jury prizes for her highly skilled oil painting technique.
Artist Statement
The inspiration for my artwork reflects my interactions with people, of which I remember
certain scenes, atmospheres, colors, and gestures. When I was a teenager, I suffered from severe atopic dermatitis and experienced recovery from skin keloid. Since then, I have become very curious about human faces, especially eyes.
As the proverb says, “Speech is silver; silence is golden.” Our eyes can express a great deal of insight about ourselves. Depicting the eyes is, in a sense, the same as depicting myself in the
mirror. I try to embody an image of myself in each portrait that I paint. I create paintings that
are often a reflection of my own issues and thoughts, which are then combined with the
model’s personality and their stories. While I find similarities and differences in gender and race
as delightful encounters, in my mind, I create an “individual” or “new character” in my paintings
that does not exist in real life.
Artsy Page
About the Artist
Yasuyo Maruyama was born in Kanagawa, Japan and currently lives and works in Texas.
She received her MFA in 2011 and BFA (Painting) in 2009 from Tokyo Zokei University in Tokyo, Japan. She has exhibited in New York, Houston, Dallas, Korea, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Los Angeles and has also won several awards and jury prizes for her highly skilled oil painting technique.
Artist Statement
The inspiration for my artwork reflects my interactions with people, of which I remember
certain scenes, atmospheres, colors, and gestures. When I was a teenager, I suffered from severe atopic dermatitis and experienced recovery from skin keloid. Since then, I have become very curious about human faces, especially eyes.
As the proverb says, “Speech is silver; silence is golden.” Our eyes can express a great deal of insight about ourselves. Depicting the eyes is, in a sense, the same as depicting myself in the
mirror. I try to embody an image of myself in each portrait that I paint. I create paintings that
are often a reflection of my own issues and thoughts, which are then combined with the
model’s personality and their stories. While I find similarities and differences in gender and race
as delightful encounters, in my mind, I create an “individual” or “new character” in my paintings
that does not exist in real life.
