Description
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:
© Setsuko Aihara