ARTISTS

Yuko Someya was born in Chiba Prefecture in 1980.
She graduated from Tokyo Zokei University with a bachelor’s degree in painting in 2004, and from the Tokyo University of the Arts with a master’s degree in printmaking in 2006. At an exhibition of prints from universities nationwide held at the Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts in 2004, she won the Collection Award / Viewers’ Award, and her work was selected by the museum for its collection. Her main solo exhibitions have been held once at the Richard Heller Gallery (in Santa Monica, United States, 2014) and four times at the Tomio Koyama Gallery (in 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2017).
Someya affixes canvas and washi to panels. Making its most of the soft texture, she depicts a fictional world with a delicate touch and coloration, whose motifs are flowers, birds, trees, and animals.
Someya says she begins by making a light outline drawing with a pencil, “wielding it as if I were spelling words.” Although the drawing is as detailed as a miniature painting, the overall impression is one of extreme softness. This is probably because of the balance with ample blank space and the coloration, which is suffused with a transparency, resting on a distinctive technique using lithograph ink, i.e., Someya not only makes layers of watercolors but also uses printing ink for instantaneous application of colors. Her motifs are imbued with a buoyancy by the large sections left blank, and radiate a bright light that seems to draw the viewer into the story they weave, and its continuation. Another part of the appeal of her works is the unique coloring and texture born of the washi colored by the printing technique and affixed to the surface.
Apart from the awards she won at the aforementioned exhibition at the Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts in 2004, she received the Honorable Mention Award in the VOCA 2014 Vision of Contemporary Art: New Artists in the Field of Two-Dimensional Art.