Kumiko Kitasako was born in 1987, and raised in Kobe, Japan. Living in a calm new town, she played both in the rich nature surrounding the town and the ordinary apartments in her childhood. When she was a teenager, she often walked around the center of Kobe. She enjoyed various cultures in that old cosmopolitan port city and liked to look out over the sea. These experiences started her attraction to both nature and artifacts, as well as creating new things by mixing different things together. Influenced by her mother's stencil dyeing, she warmed to the colors and patterns of textiles, especially on traditional Japanese clothes and vintage one-piece dresses. At the same time she began to draw with ball-point pens and she was influenced by the works of Yumeji Takehisa, Gustav Klimt, and Aubrey Beardsley. From 2006-2010, she studied product design in a local art university, and she drew illustrations and participated in exhibitions mainly in Kobe, Osaka, and Kyoto. After graduation, she entered an electronic company and started to work as a product designer in Tokyo. In 2011, she made her base in Shimokitazawa. The town, in the west-side of Tokyo, has a lot of live music clubs, vintage shops, cultural spots, and the old local shopping area. They give her inspiration even now. In 2012, her first solo exhibition "Tent in the water" was held in a gallery in Shimokitazawa. After that, she made illustrations for CD jackets, artwork for music festivals, background movies for musicians, designs for T-shirts, and so on. The main themes in her work are feelings of floating and liveliness. They are based on the feelings before sleep. Patterns that appears on the back of eyelids, motifs that come in and out like a word association game, and a feeling like floating in quiet water just before falling asleep. She thinks that this time is the most comfortable and consists of everything you've seen and heard. And she weaves it together using clear monochrome lines, patterns and soft bright colors. In her work, we can see the beauty in everyday objects and the lively, yet fleeting, world.

(C) Kitasako Kumiko All rights reserved.