MAKIKO TANAKA

Makiko Tanaka has lived and worked in Paris since 2013. She came to painting from clothing design, and that training remains legible in the work: an attention to line, drape and silhouette, and a way of building an image that owes as much to the fashion plate as to the canvas.

She works in watercolour and in oil, two media that pull in opposite directions — one quick, transparent and unforgiving, the other slow and revisable. Moving between them lets her hold a subject at two different speeds.

Her work has been taken up commercially as well as in exhibition, including by Shiseido.

Makiko Tanaka was presented in Blooming of a Heritage at Sato Gallery in April 2025.