NY Studio
Ohno will be starting to work in her studio in Manhattan, New York. Even in New York, the capital of the world, she says she can feel the magnificence of nature. She is not only impressed by real natural phenomena such as the current of the East River, tornadoes, lightning that strikes the skyscrapers, but also by the view, buildings and all, from her studio on the 26th floor. "I used to think New York was made of all artificial things, and when I went there I would paint the people here in the Melting Pot. But the nature here is great, and the buildings are amazingly beautiful, which I've never felt in any other city in the world. I never knew it before I actually started living there," says Ohno, with a new light in her eyes.

JUN'S EYE
Jun Teshigawara
Chief Curator, Setagaya Museum of Art

Ms Hiroko Ohno is a painter of Japanese paintings, but she is somehow unlike a Japanese. Her amazingly wide range of activities, the cool sensation that emerges from her pure color fields are some of the things that make her unparalleled. Resembling yamato-e at first sight, her works are filled with a transparency that covers far into the ends of the earth. In fact, her vision soars above the earth and across the sky into outer space in an instant. From there, she looks down to see the earth a blue spot floating in total darkness. All things move slowly in dynamic motion by powers that are unknown to us. Ms. Ohno gets close to this movement and listens intently. She attempts to stand still in the spot where she can feel the movement. The galaxy, seen from the deserts of Mongolia and Namibia, Africa, through the passing of inconceivable eternity, is now uniting firmly with her future.


Photo: In Water Garden Screen, the sense of floating in the sea and the flow of the water is expressed. Ultramarine and verdigris paint beautifully illuminates the dark blue paper.

Photo: Memories of Rinia. Rinia is the first plant that appeared on earth 4 hundred million years ago. The dynamic composition suggests the creation of earth.

Photo: Moon Desert depicts the experience Ohno had in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia. The moon and the sun together in a single painting has become one of her main motifs.