Yuko Murata collects real images of nature through travel brochures, postcards and magazines. The artist depicts the most essential elements of animals and landscapes by fragmenting and analyzing the collected images.

In Murata’s works, places that have not yet been visited or animals that look familiar and cute but run away once we try to get close, are expressed through a minimum number of colors and simple compositions. This arouses a mysterious atmosphere. Simple, restrained formations and strong brushstrokes are influenced by traditional Japanese paintings of the 18th Century which form a certain tension around the calm canvas. The artist leads viewers into a new meditating world by painting animals that stare into the camera or gaze far away and by simplifying sceneries of nature, which makes her works seem unnatural and foreign.