Mayuka Yamamoto has received favorable reviews with her soft and warm works in pastel tone. Her early works were mostly etching after studying print and oil painting at Musashino Art University, and started showing more paintings since she moved to London and was influence by Marlene Dumas and Gilbert & George. 

Since 2002, she has shown new styled painting to suggest a question for wound and raw fear in childhood behind warm and lovely looking through a boy standing in a soft but ambiguous background. 

Since she got pregnant, she has thought about her childhood and started depicting fear and hurt with unknown reasons at that moment. A result of her idea from such physical and psychological change becomes a boy in animal suit. The child staring at the audience with weak and anxious eyes is the artist's kid as well as portrait of the artist's childhood. 

The main motif, animal suit, is a way to hide trauma in childhood and reveal anxiety for growth. Also, the boy with sad and vague face makes memory in childhood to the present as showing in the artwork in dreamlike colors. 

This exhibition will show attractive art world like a mysterious fairytale with Oriental mind. 

*image (left)
courtesy of the artist and Gallery SP