Shusaku Takaoka, 1977 | Pop Surrealist graphic designer

Japanese🎨 graphic designer Shusaku Takaoka reimagines pop culture and art in a funny and sometimes macabre way.

The artist is inspired by our modern society to juxtapose visuals who form a funny set and sometimes denouncing aspects of an ultra-consumer and over-connected world.

Using famous faces like Mona Lisa🎨, Van Gogh🎨, and Vermeer’s "Girl with a Pearl Earring"🎨, Takaoka merges them onto bodies sporting the latest fashions. The playful project gives a whole new meaning to these painted characters, who now look incredibly modern.

Kazuhiro Uno (Japanese, 1978)

Kazuhiro Uno / 卯野和宏 is a remarkable Japanese painter🎨 born in Ibaraki Prefecture.

In 2002 he graduated from the Department of Oil Painting at Musashino University of Art, in the class of Hiroshi Sakurai.

In 2004 he took a course in oil painting, also at Musashino University of Art, under the direction of Kuno Kazuhiro.

Kazuhiro Uno's work focuses on the female figure and still life.

He is currently a member of the Federation of Japanese Artists.

Izumi Kogahara (Japanese, 1979)

Izumi Kogahara is a Japanese painter🎨 and graphic designer, born in Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefecture.

In the painting world, Izumi Kogahara is what one might call a natural-born master of color use.

Her unique use of warm, cool and neutral colors in all directions produces a singular brilliance and depth from each hue.

Kogahara is inspired by the energy of human beings that is generated not only by the instinct of life but also by the feeling generated by communicating with others.

Yoshio Markino ( 1870-1956) | The Colour of London

Makino Yoshio / 牧野 義雄, known as Yoshio Markino, was a Japanese🎨 Impressionist Watercolor painter and writer born in Koromo (Toyota City).

In 1893, he travelled to San Francisco where he trained at the Hopkins Art School, before arriving in London in 1897, instantly falling in love with the city.

He spent hours walking the streets, fascinated by the effect of mist and fog on the appearance of buildings, especially under gaslight.

Milt Kobayashi, 1950

Milt Kobayashi is a sophisticated painter who demonstrates a consummate mastery of design and unsentimental curiosity about people.

The fertile cross-currents of two great cultures have nurtured his art to a harmonious resolve of Western technique with Oriental color, pattern and spatial composition.

Kei Mieno 三重野慶, 1985 | Hyperrealist painter

Kei Mieno is a Japanese artist🎨 born in Hiroshima who has been painting professionally for more than 10 years already. 

Mieno graduating from Hiroshima City University College of Art. 

This painter specializes in hyperrealism, and mostly uses oil paint to create his masterpieces.

Toshiyuki Enoki, 1961

Educated in several different genres of lacquer painting, traditional Japanese painting and western painting, Toshiyuki Enoki's works are an amalgamation of the new and aged, reality and myth.

This artist strives to antiquate his works, not only in his thematic tribute to well known traditional artists such as Maruyama Oukyou also in his artist process.

Using particularly worn brushes, Enoki cyclically paints, erases and transfers images for his works to create a unique atmospheric depiction of Nature.

As with all four pieces, the details brushstrokes and overall reflective surface is reminiscent of lacquer works which served as an inspiration for the artist.

His selected warm colour palette and scattered gold leaf across his canvas creates an overall magical and tranquil depiction in these four featured paintings.

Yoshiro Tachibana / 橘与四郎 (Japanese, 1941-2016)

Yoshiro Tachibana is an Japanese painter born in Sanda (Kobe), based in Spain (La Coruna).

He is the son of the painter Nakaba Tachibana (1902-2000). Yoshiro began to study art in Tokyo in 1962 and became inspired by the work of Klee. In 1969 he traveled to Spain and Germany.

He lived in Hamburg and Kiel until 1973 and then Moved to Norway.

In 1975 he decided to settle in a small fishing village, Muxia (La Coruña) and began exhibiting his work in various cities in Galicia.