Below is my info written seriously, but I am just another person who loves art and connecting with others. Feel free to say hello for any inquiries about my paintings, workshops, design projects (checkout portfolio shizuka-kusayanagi-design.com), or collaborations. I’d really love hearing from you!



Artist Bio:

Shizuka Kusayanagi (b. 1982, Japan) is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and educator. While practicing painting, she has also created Art for All Ages, where she guides people of all ages and art experiences to play, develop a voice, and foster healthy relationships with themselves and others. Recent group exhibitions include: Positive Exposure: Southern California Asian American Art (2023) at Project Space, Los Angeles, CA; and CHIMERA (2023) at la Beast Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. She has also shown at Arario Gallery, New York, NY (2010) and Dublin, Ireland (2006).

Her experience at the IKEA residency was written up in The Los Angeles Times; her short film was selected in the Motionpoems film catalog in association with the Poetry Foundation; and her drawings and installations were featured in Graphic Magazine and Grafuck. She has been selected for the Fall 2023 IKEA Residency cohort and was shortlisted for the Spring 2023 Hopper Prize. Shizuka has earned a BFA in Communication Design at Parsons School of Design, New York, NY.

She has enriched her life with disciplines spanning drawing, printmaking, photography, writing, ceramics, cooking, and producing creative workshops, while working as a graphic designer and raising two healthy humans. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles as a painter, art educator, and freelance graphic designer.

Artist Statement:

Having divided my time between growing up in Japan and the United States, with frequent trips to France, I consider myself a mutt of the three cultures. I may have developed from such experience a particular sensitivity as an "insider-outsider", a curious nomad often trying to identify what constitutes a city, a culture, or a person.

I study and interpret the essence of a subject as if I were creating a portrait or translating a language. A place, a memory, or an emotion all become portraits that I steep myself in to gather information and step out of to tell their unique stories in an attempt to evoke feelings, a universal language without physical form. 

I discovered the healing qualities of painting after a year-long deep dive into inner work in 2021-2022. In my most recent work of oil paintings in the BODY section of this site, I encapsulate visions I had experienced during meditations or states of mind-body connection. Art is medicine for me and I intend of spread the medicine of the art, the visual language that unites us all as humans.