Japanese painter Makiko Kudo’s sumptuous, wistful works synthesise elements from her memory and daily life with imagined landscapes, creating visions of dreamlike beauty and elegiac poise. In Invisible (2011), a figure sits alone in a woodland glade, lost in contemplation. Seemingly unmoored from reality, the work demonstrates the surreal staging, bright palette and fluid textures that characterise Kudo’s practice. The critic David Pagel draws comparisons with the paintings of Henri Matisse, Claude Monet and Henri Rousseau, while art historian Barry Schwabsky notes that her works possess ‘a kind a classical grandeur’ in their sensuous surfaces. Included in the Saatchi Gallery’s group shows Body Language (2013) and Iconoclasts: Art Out Of The Mainstream (2017), Kudo has exhibited throughout Europe, America and Japan. Her works are held in public collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth.