青幻舎 SEIGENSHA Art Publishing

Masako Ando enjoys a solid reputation for her oils on porcelain-smooth canvas and sharp, finely detailed pencil drawings. Some years ago she moved to the pottery town of Seto in Aichi Prefecture, where her new life and the birth of her second child have inspired her to take her art in new directions. “Yukukawa,” meaning “flowing river,” appears in the twelfth-century classic An Account of My Hut as an allusion to the unceasing passage of time; in this collection, sixty works including recent ceramic pieces, watercolors, charcoal sketches, and oils reveal the present moment of an artist who—though her techniques may have evolved—remains consistently focused on rendering pictures that sensitively capture the here and now of familiar subjects.

• Includes an interview discussing Ando’s artistic evolution, creative process, and thoughts on the novels of Kenzaburo Oe, life with her family, and hopes for the future, among other topics
• Essay contributions by artist O Jun and curator Takashi Ishizaki (Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art)

Masako Ando, born in 1976 in Aichi Prefecture, continues to live there today in the city of Seto. She earned an MFA in oil painting in 2001 from Aichi University of the Arts, where she now serves as associate professor. She received the Aichi Prefectural Art and Culture Encouragement Prize for New Artists in 2020. Major solo shows include Hara Documents 9: Masako Ando—The Garden of Belly Button (2012, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art), Songbook (2016, Shibuya Hikarie 8/Art Gallery and Tomio Koyama Gallery), and Portraits (2021, Tomio Koyama Gallery); major group exhibitions, Takahashi Collection: Mindfulness! (2013, Kirishima Open-Air Museum and Sapporo Art Museum) and What Is Real?: Contemporary Artists, Living and Depicting (2022, Hiratsuka Museum of Art and other venues). Her first collection, Songbook, was published in 2015 by Seigensha.