Asuka Anastacia Ogawa (b. 1988, Tokyo, Japan) creates large figurative paintings that depict androgynous children in chimerical dreamscapes, otherworldly scenes formed from solid fields of color and flat picture planes. Her subjects have wide thin eyes that gaze forward, piercing the fourth wall. Ogawa conjures these compositions through an exercise that embraces unmediated impulse and channels the sense of curiosity, wonder and play paramount to childhood.
Ogawa was born in Tokyo where she spent much of her childhood. When she was three years old, Ogawa moved from this vertical urban backdrop to rural Brazil, where she passed a handful of formative early years amongst wandering farm animals and rushing waterfalls. The artist later relocated to Sweden when she was a teen, where she attended high school, and soon thereafter she moved to London to pursue her BFA from Central Saint Martins. The artist now lives and works in New York and Los Angeles.