Japanese Mixed Media Artist: Yuko Ishii

Yuko Ishii is a self-taught artist from Japan who currently works from Washington. She finds inspiration for her photography and mixed media artwork from the nature around her especially the mountains. Birds are the recurring subject matter in her work, she loves to communicate with the birds to get a better understanding of their habits and their natural habitat.

"In nature I feel invisible things and hear beautiful sounds which I have never witnessed in city life. My background as a musician and poet allows me to sharpen and expand a whole range of elements together, and intuit the spiritual matters more into my everyday life." via

Yuko creates digital photographs by editing and printing them with archival pigment inks on printmaking paper. To make her work look more like a painting, she goes over the finished piece with colored pencils. The final artwork is affixed onto a wood panel and sealed a coat of wax. Through her art she has been exploring a whole range of mediums.

Her work is also an intriguing mix of found objects such as bottles, junk metals, and sticks. Yuko creates shrines and assemblages with handmade paper and organic materials like ash, sand, soil, grass, and soot. You can find her work here and here.