(Oil and oil pastel on linen) I turned to meditation and painting as meditation as a response to a traumatic experience that shook me sideways. While feeling all the emotions that would want me to stab, kick, punch, yell, hide, I could center myself, completely present in the face of a blank canvas, and start building forms and colors that wanted to be poured out. The way pearls are created by oysters as a defense mechanism from irritants having entered into the body… If oysters and mussels were artists they create something beautiful as as a result of having processed stress and pain, to stay as their healthy, authentic self. And I don’t mean “artists” in a literal sense. We are all artists pushing through discomfort and creating life every moment.

Shizuka Kusayanagi

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Shizuka Kusayanagi (b. 1982, Yokohama, Japan) is an artist, designer, and educator whose practice centers on painting, drawing, and text as forms of translation—exploring how personal and emotional experiences can be expressed beyond words. After more than 25 years living in New York and Los Angeles, she recently returned to Japan and now lives and works in Fukuoka. Working primarily in oil painting, Kusayanagi also works across drawing, printmaking, installation, photography, video, and text. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including a solo show at Signal Gallery in Fukuoka, Japan; DMST Atelier, Project Space, and la Beast Gallery in Los Angeles; Arario Gallery in New York; and in Dublin, Ireland. Recent exhibitions include All The (Healing) Parts (2024), Positive Exposure: Southern California Asian American Art (2023), and CHIMERA (2023). Kusayanagi was selected for the Fall 2023 IKEA Residency and shortlisted for the Spring 2023 Hopper Prize. Her IKEA residency experience was featured in The Los Angeles Times. Her short film was selected for the Motionpoems film catalog in association with the Poetry Foundation, and her drawings and installations have been featured in Graphic Magazine and Grafuck. She holds a BFA in Communication Design from Parsons School of Design in New York.