ArtMineko

I commissioned ArtMineko for an oil painting for prominent display in my offices frequented by architects and designers. She produced a work of an engaging dynamic quality that generates provocative and open minding discussions. Over time the piece has become more interesting and has not been subject to the slow decent into banality of most pieces frequently displayed.

I have always felt that abstraction in painting fostered a glorious breakthrough into the condition of purely visual music, but that almost from its inception its practitioners took a wrong turn into self-indulgence and an increasingly arid formalism. The work of Mineko restores the original promise of abstract art to give us not the representation of causes and effects but the distillation of inner experience, and especially to explore realms of playfulness, joy, and spiritual plenitude long neglected in fashionably despairing styles. These paintings please us at first glance with their graceful compositions and they reward deep engagement with their details. They gratify us without the pretentiousness and search for novelty that disfigure so much contemporary art. This is healthy and affirmative painting that celebrates our humanity.

Mineko Yoshida is of the rare artists whose work is best described in one word: alive. Artistic genius requires a remarkable combination of discipline, experience and originality that is informed but not bound by the past history of art and culture, and free of all pretense. It is fearless. In other words, the experience of her work is like that of great music . It creates an expansion , liberation and a depth of feeling within and beyond the self.

I was attracted to Mineko Yoshida's work on first viewing. There is primarily a great joy that can be sensed behind it all. Her use of vibrant colors, often primary colors, is part of that experience. But her dancing shapes are what gives one exhilaration. They are based upon her Japanese training in calligraphy of course. She studied with one of the foremost calligraphers in Japan, in Okinawa. I think she is one of the finest abstract painters. So, I believe her work is angelic, it has given a renaissance to the true beauty and spiritual meaning behind the original abstract expressionism of Kandinsky et al. Yes, it is abstract, but the new living shapes of JOY!