Kotao Tomozawa

Kotao Tomozawa is a student at Tokyo University of the Arts majoring in oil painting. Kotao has majored in multiple solo shows and group exhibitions since 2022. The artist’s style can be chategorized as hyper-realistic paintings, which play on various textures such as slime materials and organic motifs, often imbuing her paintings a sense of three-dimensionality. Motifs of suffocation are prevalent on her canvases, with her main choice of subject matter being babies, which may indicate a critique on motherhood. However, the artist does not comment on this aspect of her work. In addition, her use of primary colours further intensifies this theme of suffocation. Kotao formed an art unit “Tororoen” with her mother, a manga artist, in 2019. In an interview with Japan House, she attributes her early inspiration to her mother and cites additional influences such as Hanawa Kazuichi’s manga “Tsukuba no Hikari” and the paintings of Francis Bacon.