Makiko Nakamura was born in Japan in 1951. She was brought up by her Grandparents who encouraged her to paint from a very early age. Her Grandfather and her Uncle were both artists and the house was filled with their painting materials which she was taught to use, learning the techniques of calligraphy and traditional Japanese painting. As an only child, she described painting becoming her best friend and consumming her daily life.
In 1966 she went to art school in Kyoto to study printmaking, sculpture, film-making and painting, and then working as a film editor. In 1995 she moved to Paris to continue her studies in painting and printmaking before heading to Philadelphia to study at the Graduate School of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1999 she made the decision to move to Dublin where she lived and worked until 2013, taking Irish citizenship in 2011. Examples of her work from this period can be seen at the Irish Museum of Modern Art as well as two commissiond works for the Gate Theatre.
Throughout her fourteen years in Ireland and ever since her return to Japan in 2013, Makiko Nakamura’s studio practice has remained constant. She refers to her canvases as her ‘slow paintings’, each one following the same steady process over several months: a single, repeating pattern or a block of colour left to dry before being overpainted with another and another, until she stops painting and begins to work her way back through the different layers with fine sandpaper. Her tightly controlled technique she likens to archaeology, a process that allows her to see through time, revisiting memories hidden in the work. From their simple, minimalist beginning each painting takes on a more organic and expressive character. The emotional and artistic decisions of preceding months, once covered, reappearing as tantalising glimpses through the painting’s history.