Seiko Tachibana

 

Seiko Tachibana completed her Master of Art Education degree at Kobe University, Japan. She received an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute and has since received many awards for the body of her work. She has had many solo and group exhibitions internationally. Her distinctive art balances Asian tradition with minimalist modernity. Her work shows an interest in a wide range of media, including drawing, painting, mixed media, and printmaking. Among printmaking techniques, she is a master of intaglio processes, particularly aquatint. Tachibana’s prints are in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum, The Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, and the Portland Museum of Art, among others. She is widely collected in the US, Europe, and Japan. In the Bay Area, Tachibana is represented by the Ren Brown Collection, in Bodega Bay.

 

Artist's statement

 

The elements in my work are representations of everything I see, hear, breathe, and

taste. All our actions have meaning. Likewise, each of my lines, each of my dots is created deliberately. Each is made to be just so. I often employ circles and bars among my marks as metaphors for rain and water. Rain is about hope. It gives life to all creatures on Earth. It is an essential element in the cycle of life. The circle represents the natural duality of the infinite whole and suggests the constant balancing forces of Yin and Yang.

 

In living our daily lives, we are confronted with an almost incomprehensible deluge of images, and our understanding of the world around us—our reality—is largely dependent on which images we choose to inform us and which we reject. We are, therefore, simultaneously enlightened and deceived about the true nature of the universe. When I began to compose the works in my "Inside-insight" series, I was inspired by the idea that our unique way of experiencing the reality of the universe might be represented by an interaction of competing, yet complementary motifs combined within one artwork. If we allow ourselves to focus on just one motif we experience the work in one particular way, and while we may appreciate the art in this way, we are ultimately deceived. In addition, our understanding is subject to variations within our cognitive processes resulting from physiological, psychological, and emotional factors that change from day to day—even from moment to moment. For this reason, we may find ourselves contemplating different interpretations of the same work over time. Ultimately, however, it is through awareness and appreciation of the unity of all the elements and of their relationships to each other that we achieve an understanding of the true reality of the work.