Reiko Muranaga
[Pronounced: lake•O]

Prior to my discovery of oil painting in San Francisco in 1989, I had led a life that had very little to do with art. While being brought up in a proper, courteous and homogeneous culture of Japan, I longed for “the unknowns” from an early age. I began writing extensively and was awarded a small national literary prize in Japan for my first essay on a Renaissance German painter Albrecht Dürer entitled “Greatness or Aloof Narcissism.”

With no formal art education, I experienced the urge to begin drawing. In twelve months I completed over one thousand figure drawings at drop in-classes at Fort Mason’s Art Center. I decided to submit a portfolio of work from these drawings to Stanford University’s Fine Arts Department and was accepted as a non-matriculated graduate student, thereby leaving my career as a tri-lingual technical interpreter. I studied under Nathan Oliveira, not aware of his legacy or even the difference between oil and acrylic.

People ask my inspiration or how I plan my work. I neither have images nor plans when I begin. Perhaps I work like a musician composing a piece of music; adding, modifying, changing, and often deleting scores. I then find that, without consciously planning to finish the piece, at some point it is done. I am most intrigued when experiencing deep connections with viewers through what is defined as “abstract”.

I owe much of who I am today as a painter to my mentor, Nathan Oliveira, whose insight and inspiration encouraged me to go beyond convention.

San Francisco, 2011