To Pender Harbour artist Motoko, one of her most significant paintings is called Journey. It's an abstract with a recognizable single Japanese character "michi" that has been incorporated into the painting and means passage, a road or path.The painting reveals her own long journey that has brought her to the fulfillment of a dream Ñ developing her art to the point that she has a solid body of work to display in her new studio in Garden Bay.In Japan, Motoko trained as a dietician Ñ all the children in her family followed the lead of her doctor father. Secretly, she really wished to go to art school, but that would have to wait. When she emigrated to Canada in the early 1990s, she knew no one in the country and passed some unhappy years before finding her way to Pender Harbour, meeting her current husband who works in the marine industry and starting to paint full time with the help of a mentor, Joyce Kimikura, in Vancouver.Her first works were pure watercolour florals, using traditional themes and designs, then she moved to mixed media Ñ collage-style works which use watercolour, tissue paper and fluid acrylics to give the painting texture and depth."You can be very creative with this style," she says, displaying several limited edition giclee prints of colourful koi fish swimming in a water garden of hand-applied gold foil. Motoko is largely self-taught, so she was delighted that the Gibsons School of the Arts offered high quality art courses on the Coast. She studied with Joyce Sawatski and Ruth McKinnon, and the intensive drill moved her along. Somewhere during this creative growth, both her husband and a good friend got her interested in painting boats, particularly custom portraits for boat owners. She found she had a knack for it and enjoyed meeting the skippers. And it provided her with an art form that generated income. The abstracts came later."I wouldn't attempt an abstract until I had mastery of technique," she says. The resulting pictures, all painted in the last several years, are contemporary, using vibrant colours and drawing their themes from the diversity of nature blended with her own creative vision. For example, a depiction of a tree that Motoko describes as passionate, the arbutus tree, is not a life-like rendering. Instead, within the shades of red, it captures the spirit of the living plant. Other abstracts absorb the moss green of the forest or reflect the depths of the ocean's tidal pools. An abstract print, The Universe, sold very quickly at a recent Arts Centre event; the original will be on show at her studio. Its appeal lies in the sense of the cosmos, unfathomable yet contained, in a bubble of light and shimmering water.Other representational work offers insight into Motoko's Japanese heritage. One unfinished painting, Memoire, depicts a traditional gift, a kimono, for a young woman when she turns 20. It's a sister piece to a previous painting that shows a typical obi sash.For several years, her paintings, mainly florals, have been shown at a Langley fine arts gallery. When an Ontario distributor, Nature's Scene, saw her work, they suggested she make limited edition prints from her originals, a process that has opened her work to a much wider market. Motoko loved that her pieces seemed popular and were selling but realized that she wasn't receiving the personal satisfaction of actually meeting her customers. With the support of her family and friends, she decided to open her own gallery in Garden Bay and paint on site during open hours as a way of meeting people and talking to them about art."That is, if anyone can find me here," she says ruefully, since her studio is tucked away in the side of a hill in Garden Bay. The gallery can be reached by driving along Garden Bay Road for about eight minutes, making a right turn onto Sinclair Bay Road, then about two minutes to 4590 Sinclair Bay Road. The opening exhibition will be from Sunday, Oct. 30, to Sunday, Nov. 6, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day. See www.motokoart.com for more or call 1-888-motokos.
