Yoko Mitsuhashi

Decorative, graphically appealing, informative, detailed and brilliantly colored. Yoko Mitsuhashi's illustrations of New York typify her radiant style and optimistic point of view as well as her feeling for both oriental and western design traditions. Produced for the Japanese consumer magazine Anan, these monthly reports on life in in NewYork cover a variety of topics from Halloween and Valentines Day to the wedding of a friend and a visit with Paul Davis, whose work is very popular in Japan.

Making her preliminary pictures with a series of superimposed pencil sketches, Yoko uses her eraser as an auxiliary drawing tool to remove from the final version all the lines she feels are unnecessary. She completes the painting with watercolors and acrylics. Although her illustrations for children's books are unsurpassed, Ms. Mitsuhashi is a versatile designer, adapting her style easily to such varied assignments as television titles, flyers for her sister's East side Manhattan dress shop, and one or two-color promotion pieces.

Ms. Mitsuhashi grew up in Tokyo where she attended high school and graduated in 1959 from the Women's College for Fine Arts. Following her graduation, she worked fro two-and-a-half years at the Nippon Design Center. In 1962, she came to New York, but she still enjoys working for Japanese clients and tries to manage a brief visit to her native country every two to three years. "So many people in this country like to make limitations," she comments in comparing the design fields here and in Japan. "There, you are given a page and told to fill it up. You have a lot of freedom. And Tokyo is too fast, more rushed than New York. Here, I have more time."