My abstract paintings have no fixed orientation—no top, no bottom, no sides. Hang them as you wish: let your mood, the season, or your space guide you.

My theme is "Allowing the Self to Be." I paint hoping to draw out what viewers truly feel and encourage empathy toward oneself. Through this creative practice, I also face myself.

My work includes both a Lacquer (Urushi) Series and a Transparent Watercolor Series. While Urushi is traditionally used for craft, I utilize this natural medium as a painter's material to create complex layers without clear motifs, reflecting the ambiguity within our inner selves. Urushi, which changes its expression over time, and watercolors, with their beauty of bleeding and blurring, both teach me to let go of control and allow things to be.

Emotions and sensations born through our senses are never created from nothing. They arise from countless experiences and memories accumulated within each viewer.

No emotion or sensation is right or wrong—what you feel is legitimate. If my work helps you accept "why I feel this way now" as it is, and opens a way to face yourself, nothing would bring me greater joy.

Kuniko Aoi is a Kyoto-based abstract artist working with Urushi (Japanese lacquer) and transparent watercolor.

Aoi utilizes Urushi, a traditional natural lacquer, as a unique painting medium. Her work explores "Allowing the Self to Be"—themes of ambiguity and acceptance expressed through materials that are difficult to control. For example, Urushi transforms over time, embodying change, while watercolor flows unpredictably, revealing inner landscapes.

After leaving Japan's civil service in 2017, Aoi studied picture book creation before turning to abstract painting in 2023.

Recent Exhibitions:
Group exhibitions in Kyoto (2023–2025)
Permanent display at Gallery Morino Sakana, Kyoto (2024)