Silkscreen. Born 1938 Kyoto. Kyoto Municipal College of Fne Arts; Kyoto National Museum Japanese classical painting.
Permanent Collections: The British Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum and numerous private collections. Solo exhibitions in New York, Portland, Maryland, Washington, Australia, Canada, Japan.
Sugiura has been inspired by flowers for years, and he has an enthusiastic audience who appreciates every interpretation he makes of irises, peonies, roses, cosmos, camellias, chrysanthemums, or spider lilies. He is in particular noted for his compositions of irises and has made more than one hundred different iris prints. Sugiura relies on traditional Japanese techniques to execute his beautiful silkscreens. He applies squares of gold leaf, in the same way old screens were made, onto handmade Japanese paper. His next silkscreens his floral subjects onto the gold leaf. As each tone requires a separate screen, a colourful and complicated print may go through twenty printing stages. Next, blocking out the flowers, he uses a wash of pale shades of blue, purple, or green to cover the rest of the work, thereby toning down the glittering gold leaf and softening the effect. The result is visually relaxing, and soothing.
