Artist Statement 

LIFE series

Trained in the Japanese traditional painting style known as Nihonga, which employs sumi ink, delicate brushwork, and natural mineral pigments, my artistic practice is rooted in reverence for the past — yet directed toward the future.
My goal is twofold: to revive the dynamism, boldness, and often playful spirit seen in the works of masters like Hokusai Katsushika and Jakuchu Ito, and to pioneer a new visual language that fuses classical materials with contemporary and technological motifs — including computer circuit boards, acrylic pouring, and silkscreen printing.

At the heart of this exploration is my ongoing LIFE series — a body of abstract works that oscillate between the microcosmic and the macrocosmic.
Motifs emerge from both organic and synthetic sources: microscopic images, ancient scripts (Chinese, Sanskrit), digital circuitry, or purely imagined forms.
The series blurs boundaries between biological and mechanical, ancient and futuristic, material and immaterial.

The first painting in the series, LIFE — which received the Thesis Excellence Award from Musashino Art University — was created as a traditional Byōbu (Japanese folding screen). This format grants the work a physical presence akin to a semi-three-dimensional object. Silver leaf on rice paper was intentionally oxidized to create an iridescent surface. The piece evokes a vast computer circuit board at first glance, but upon closer inspection, it transforms: one might see a giant aquatic organism, a city from above, or symbolic charts representing the interconnectedness of all things. The title “LIFE” was chosen to reflect this multiplicity — life as energy, form, system, and presence.

As the series evolved, many viewers began to describe the works as existing in spiritual or otherworldly realms — “the coexistence of paradise and hell,” as one described it.
The central theme of LIFE is the union of opposites: pain and joy, movement and stillness, light and darkness, the ancient and the modern, the microscopic and the cosmic.
In this sense, the series aims to act as a visual meditation — a gateway into unseen dimensions and felt experiences that transcend language.

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Blue series

The Blue Series is a sub-series of my ongoing LIFE project, dedicated to exploring the depth, emotion, and spiritual resonance of the color blue.

The color blue is universally most popular color in many countries. Blue is the color of sea reflecting the sky, and blue is the color of earth observed from space. It represents water and air, essential to our lives. In ancient Rome, blue was once considered barbaric and undesirable, yet its universal presence in the sky and sea has inspired people across cultures to reproduce it for centuries. Because natural sources for blue dye are rare, humans have long experimented to capture and control this elusive hue. In Japan, indigo has been used for centuries in textiles and art — a color of depth and quiet elegance. Yet even this rich pigment could not satisfy artists like Hokusai, who sought to depict the brilliant blue of a clear sky. He turned instead to a Western oil pigment created through metallic chemical reactions.

Even today, the range of blue achievable with traditional inks and pigments is limited. Yves Klein famously created his own customized blue to capture its intensity. Similarly, I found that Japanese dyes and mineral pigments could not convey the semi-transparency and layered depth I sought. Through experimentation, I developed a technique using colored inks on rice paper, which allows me to achieve a luminous, ethereal blue that feels infinite. The viewer may find themselves suspended between worlds: immersed in silence yet aware of vibration, surrounded by color yet conscious of emptiness, drawn into a space where the visible dissolves into the infinite. My Blue Series absorbs the viewer’s emotions, offering a moment of stillness, tranquility, and expanded vision — a glimpse toward somewhere further, somewhere wider. Sorrows and pain dissolve into blue, like mist vanishing into the sky or bubbles disappearing in the ocean.

The concept of this series is sublimation and catharsis. We all carry emotional burdens. Instead of retaliating or reacting directly to pain, we can transform this energy into something constructive. Violence and hatred only breed more destruction; creation transforms it into light.

My inspiration for this belief deepened through my study of Noh theater, an art form that has endured for centuries with its profound and universal themes. In the play Fuji-Daiko, the wife and daughter of a court musician discover he has been murdered by a jealous rival. Powerless to seek justice, they play his drum and dance — their grief and anger intensifying until it becomes a spiritual possession. When the performance ends, they are freed from their rage and depart in peace.

This is the power of art: catharsis. My wish is for the Blue Series to calm dark energies, even if only for a moment, because I believe that even the smallest act of transformation is a step toward a more hopeful tomorrow.

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Legend series

​My other style is the Legend series. The first work in this style, “Map of Modern Desire” (awarded New Artist award in the Liquitex Biennale) is a modern Mandala (Buddhist visual schema of the enlightened mind). The collage is made with advertising photos of everyday commodities such as groceries, cars, and underwear, composed for purely visual effect, regardless of their purpose or meaning. It is then traced and painted with Sumi ink brushwork and dye to give it a decayed, antique look. The concept is a postmodern combination of old and new; Japanese ancient painting technique used to portray commercial items typical of our modern period. The theme is “the impermanence of all things”, the Buddhism dogma according to which everything we see now will become old, decayed and forgotten. All that prospers must decline and fall. I visualizes a panoramic view of Capitalist life imbued with irony in which everything is mass produced and mass consumed and forgotten instantly. The things we see and use every day, the things we currently talk about and praise… how will they look a thousand years later? This is the requiem for mass consumption.

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Quote

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Minako Yamano presents her artwork “LIFE XXXIX(39) – Sea Clock” for the “Aldilà” Art exhibition at M.A.D.S. Art gallery. This artwork is part of the “LIFE series, which is a microcosmic/macrocosmic abstract works where motifs are taken from various artificial and natural objects”. The artist remembers as a child when she saw the image of undersea volcanic activity, she was a witness through technology and learnt about the breathing of the ocean. Minako carries the blue as the inhale waiting for green and white tones to exhale between the flowing of every breath taken by the ocean. Waves are triggered by the volume of the fire mountain teamed up with every element across its path, scanning the area with different vibrations creating blue lights to be promptly taken away to reveal us precise gold details. The activity is hidden beneath the dark waters, which Minako has colored with deep and bright blue tones in order to enlighten the ocean. Golden details remind us how imperative is tranquility after turmoil, which often brings us balance in our existence. Time the ocean, time its waves, time its life. Minako Yamano renders it tangible for her “Aldilà”. “LIFE XXXIX(39) – Sea Clock”, the artist is the witness of the deepest ocean’s “Aldilà”.

ーFor Aldila show. Art Curator Karla Peralta Málaga, M.A.D.S gallery

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