Noriko Shinohara

Cutie’s Love Letter From Malta Island

January 11, 2020 through February 29, 2020

Public Opening Reception: Saturday, January 11th from 6:00 to 8:00 pm

Deborah Colton Gallery is pleased to present Noriko Shinohara: Cutie’s Love Letter From Malta Island. There is a public opening reception on Saturday, January 11th from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. 

Noriko Shinohara was born in 1953 in Takaoka City, Japan. In 1972, she moved to New York to study art, where she soon met Ushio a year later. Establishing her artistic career while rearing her and Ushio’s son, Noriko debuted her first solo exhibit at New York’s Cats Club in 1986. 

Having worked as an artist for many years, she is best known for her humorous series Cutie and Bullie. Beginning in 2006, this series has been composed of drawings, paintings, and prints that feature her characters Cutie and Bullie, and are based on Ushio and herself. Truthful to the point of discomfort, her Cutie and Bullie series chronicles Cutie's early trials of being married to an older man, and the difficulty of being an artist in New York. The scenes, inspired by recent events, show Cutie's triumphs as both herself and the world outside are finally realizing her work and value. 

Noriko's work has been exhibited frequently in New York and Japan. Her prints have been selected twice for the juried exhibition New Prints at the International Print Center in New York in 2003 and 2005. In 2007, she was featured in Japan Society Gallery’s centennial celebration Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary Artists in New York, a large-scale group exhibition demonstrating the confluent cultures of New York and Japan. She had her first solo museum exhibition at Carlton University Art Gallery in Ottawa Canada, and is part of the permanent collections of the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College. In 2015, Deborah Colton Gallery first exhibited Noriko’s work in Love is a Roar-r-r! and has been representing her artistic creations since then.

Deborah Colton Gallery is founded on being an innovative showcase for ongoing presentation and promotion of strong historical and visionary contemporary artists worldwide, whose diverse practices include painting, works on paper, sculpture, video, photography, performance, conceptual future media and public space installations. The gallery aspires to provide a forum through connecting Texas, national and international artists to make positive change.