Hiroko Yoshimoto: New Works

The Santa Paula Art Museum presents “Hiroko Yoshimoto: New Works,“ an exhibition of 40 new artworks that represent the Ventura artist’s continued work on her long-running “Biodiversity“ series. The exhibit also features “Impending Storms,” a large-scale installation designed by Blue Marble Art Collective, a group that includes Yoshimoto and artists Katherine Chang Liu, W. Scott Miles, and Tori Tasch. Many of the artworks in the exhibit will be available for purchase. The exhibition will open with a premiere reception on Saturday, July 16, 2022, from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Admission to the reception is $5.00 for SPAM members, and $10.00 for non-members. “Hiroko Yoshimoto: New Works” and “Impending Storms” will be on view July 16, 2022, to November 6, 2022.
Hiroko Yoshimoto has continued to add to her “Biodiversity” series since first exhibiting it at Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard in 2014, and several other venues through 2017. The complete series, including many pieces that now belong to public and private collections, amounts to more than 140 canvases and just as many watercolors and sketches. Inspired by biologist Edward O. Wilson and other environmental writers, Yoshimoto paints abstract images to convey her concern for the growing threat to biological diversity.

“Yoshimoto’s work is a masterclass in mark-making,” notes Santa Paula Art Museum Executive Director Jennifer Heighton. “In her ‘Biodiversity’ series, lines bend, curve, and curl in all directions, while pools of saturated color ripple across the canvas. The series is a visual triumph, and a call to action.” The artist’s newest works also include delicate silverpoint drawings that reflect those of the Renaissance masters who first made that medium famous. Drawn with the fine point of a silver needle and tarnishing to bronze over time, Yoshimoto’s realistic drawings serve as a stunning counterpart to her abstract paintings within the exhibit.
Hiroko recently teamed with fellow environmentally conscious artists Katherine Chang Liu, W. Scott Miles, and Tori Tasch to form Blue Marble Art Collective. The term “blue marble” was coined in 1972 by the astronauts traveling to the Moon on Apollo 17 to describe our fragile planet seen from a distance of about 18,000 miles. Together the four artists designed “Impending Storms,” a large, collaborative art installation that will hang at the center of the Museum’s main gallery.
“Our purpose in creating this installation is to put a spotlight on the reality of the impending dangers of significant loss of species and biodiversity,” the group explains, “and by inference, the dangers looming over our biosphere.” Blue Marble Art Collective invited artists from all across the county, including school children, to make drawings depicting endangered animals and plants that are caught in the “fishnet” of human design. The installation will feature hundreds of drawings submitted by the public, and museum visitors will be invited to create and add their own images during the show’s run.
About Hiroko Yoshimoto

Hiroko Yoshimoto was born and raised in Japan and moved to Los Angeles as a teen. She has BA and MA degrees in Art from UCLA. Yoshimoto became a U.S. citizen in the 1970s. She taught studio art at Ventura College as a full-time professor until her retirement, and at the same time worked as an exhibiting artist. Hiroko’s interest in painting has long been in appreciation of nature focusing on ecological concerns. In addition to Southern California, the artist has exhibited in New York, Tokyo, Osaka, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Seattle, Houston, Ashland, Denver, and other locations. Her studio is in Ventura, California.