Noriko Sugita

Noriko Sugita was born in Hakodate, Japan, into a family which counted among them architects, a choreographer, and a kadō master. She earned BFA from Southern Oregon University in 2004.

Working as a licensed preschool teacher, she encountered the wonderful imagination and powerful thoughts of children. Living in Ashland, Oregon, in the early 2000s, she began to paint an imaginary world based on past experience and Japanese animations.  Boats and yachts leave harbors with hopes and dreams, doors and windows open to different dimensions, and flowers and trees allude to nostalgic memories.

As a painter and reduction woodcut printmaker, Sugita has been actively showing her work for the past 20 years. Her work has been exhibited in the US and internationally, and is part of numerous private and corporate collections.

“I enjoy the indirect qualities of reduction-woodblock printed images. From the energies of carving, sharp tools that scratch and hit the wood plate, colors transfering onto paper from the plate, I notice something that I cannot do with a brush. Through this process I discover my concealed intentions and thoughts.

When I go to new places or observe current trends in music or newly choreographed dance, my imagination starts to overlap with my thoughts, memories, and desires.

I grew up watching Japanese animations, and learned to enjoy fantasizing about things I saw and heard, be them a door leading to the other dimensions or a pocket with a solution to anything you desire.

I enjoyed these animations with children in the preschool I worked as a teacher, and later with my own children. Seeing children in their imaginary world made me recall the imaginary world I had as my younger self.

I like to express air movement, atmosphere, and imaginary sound in my work. Those are sometimes seen in the lines and small dots on the picture plane.

The reduction printing method allows for the layering of color, and texture can also be added through the use of rollers and stencils, making it possible to combine painterly and graphic imagery. I feel excitement and freedom to be able to show my own balanced world, with color themes influenced by Japanese kimono textile designs.

In nature, light shines on subjects to make viewable to a spectator a perfect balance. I try to introduce my own imperfect balance to challenge nature’s perfect balance.

Producing art enriches my life and enables me to see myself connected to others—people, nature, music and dance movement.”