Setsuko Aihara

1. Bog Queen (2013) – oil on linen; 32 x 26 in. Inspired by Seamus Heaney’s poems “Bog Queen and Punishment”

2. Self-Surgery (2009) – oil on canvas; 50 x 40 in. Humanity can no longer be spared the gruesome sight of the psychological dissecting table with its knives and forceps. (Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All-too-human, aphorism 37.) As applied on the personal level.

3. Puppet (2016) – oil on linen; 26 x 32 in. Determination to break free from psychological complexes.

4. A-Boys (2017) – oil on canvas; 40 x 32 in. Inspired by Joe O’Donnell’s photograph, Yakiba no Shonen (A boy at a pit for burning corpses.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Setsuko Aihara was born and raised in Japan, and began drawing and painting in her mid-thirties after making an existential decision in favor of aesthetic existence. She worked for many years in Honolulu, Cambridge (Mass.), and Ireland, and now lives in Vienna, Austria. She paints in oil using the Venetian method. Other than a basic painting class from Ken Bushnell in 1980, and a summer atelier course from Charles Cecil in Florence in 2005, she is self-taught.

Having gone through many phases of self-liberation and challenges from racial and gender discrimination as an Asian woman in the United States, she began to experience images coming from the depths of her psyche, often through dreams, which she incorporated into her narrative paintings. She has also painted commemorative portraits honoring great human beings, especially of women.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

1986 – Artists of Hawaii Show, Honolulu Academy of Art, Honolulu

1996 – Cambridge Art Association, Cambridge, USA

1997 – Solo Show, Cambridge – Women’s Art Show, Harvard University, Cambridge

2003 – Schaefer Portrait Challenge

2003 – Maui Arts and Cultural Center, Maui – The Copley Society of Art, Boston – Portrait of the Late Congresswoman Patsy Mink: digital image in the National Portrait Gallery archive, Washington DC – The Hawaii Consortium for the Arts, Honolulu

2004 – the Copley Society of Art, Boston

2005 – Gallery AKUM, Vienna, Austria 2006 – 9th International Open, Woman Made Gallery, Chicago – Sigmund-Freud University, Vienna – University for Music, Vienna

2009 – Solo Show, ‘Images from the Depths’, Austria-Japan

2009 – Sigmund Freud University, Vienna 2010 – 13th International Open, Woman Made Gallery, Chicago – ‘Power of Fantasy, Cutting-edge Manneristic Fantastic Art’, Barockschloss Riegersburg, Austria

2012 – ‘Fantastic Generations, Uncommon Vision’, Phantastenmuseum Wien, Palais Palffy, Vienna 2017 – Woman Made Gallery, Chicago

2018 – Presentation: Critique through Images: Academie du Midi, Alet-les-Bains, France

2019 – Presentation: Japanese Art and Aesthetics, Ljubljana University, Slovenia – Solo Show, ‘Faces and Figures’, Austria Japan Year

2019 – Galerie Gewebe, Vienna Credits:

2019 – Galerie Gewebe, Vienna Credits:

artist website

© Setsuko Aihara