Lana Matsuyama

Lana Matsuyama is a Japanese-American contemporary artist, designer and creative director based in London and New York. Specialising in abstract mixed media paintings and drawings, she aims to retain a sense of minimalism in her work whilst simultaneously creating movement, emotion and complexity through repetition, texture and patina.

Lana's inspiration comes from patterns in nature, ever-changing urban landscapes and Japanese influences such as wabi-sabi. Conceptually, she is interested in exposing the creative process through a practice of layering, adjusting, and building. This is expressed on the canvas in a variety of ways: the application of translucent or fragmented layers, the stacking of different mediums on the same surface, painting over underlying images, and the repetition of incrementally shifting adjacent lines to create forms that are constantly in flux.

Lana studied design, psychology and advertising at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualised Study and graduated with high honors. Professionally, she worked as a designer and strategist at the world's leading online fine art resource as well as an award-winning interactive agency in New York before founding her own studio, Design Pool (wearedesignpool.com), where she now leads a talented team of multi-disciplinary creatives. Lana's expansion into fine art is a natural progression from her background in design; her forms and compositions as well as her process as an artist are informed by her approach to graphic design and digital illustration.