Tomomi Ono was Born in Kyoto, Japan.
I spent my formative years in Japan, Spain and the United States where I developed an original style in art of lithography characterized by delicate modeling and coloring of organic motifs. At Saga Art College, I majored in traditional Japanese painting, and after I moved to New York in 1994, I studied lithography at the Art Students League of NY.
Currently I live and work in Brooklyn.
I always have a strong feeling about nature. I believe the landscape and cultural background of my native country, Japan, have influenced my artistic views. I attach importance to space and simplicity, and embraces a philosophy that celebrate the boundless of nature over the transience of individual life. All of my images imply a presence of life, and I want the viewer to feel part of it.
My art is a gathering of external and internal experience.
The theme of the seed-flow series is “life existence” and the transience of that existence, which remains only while water continues to run through one’s body. My early subjects were picked from everyday life: fruits that had been abandoned in the refrigerator for several months, dried seeds that were either at the beginning or end stage of life. They all represented a moment of life, belonging to the order of nature.
After completing the seed-flow series, I started my sky series, focusing on the themes of life-force energy and the propagation and continuation of life cycles. The stars are depicted very subtly in the day skies of these prints, so faintly that the viewer needs to look closely to see them. In realty, of course, the stars are not visible in day light, although they exist all the time. I see the day stars as the existence of life in the sky, beyond the cloud and sunlight. My skies are not scientific star maps. They are the skies of my senses. My recent images have two points of view; looking up/down or looking into/out. One looks up at the sky is also, at the same time experiencing himself visible from the sky. One looks into something is also seen by that. The lives always come and go leaving a subtle sign of presence and influence...
