Michele Kishita
Biography
Michele Kishita is a Philadelphia-based painter whose work engages the landscape through an exploration of light, atmosphere, and spatial perception. Influenced by the graphic stylization and compositional structure of Japanese ukiyo-e prints, her paintings translate natural environments into distilled, immersive visual experiences.
Kishita’s work is held in private and corporate collections including Toyota, Capital One, and Kaiser Permanente. Her paintings have been featured in Create Magazine, the Poetry Foundation blog, and on the Studio Break and Thyme in the Studio podcasts, as well as in several literary journals. She has participated in artist residencies in New Mexico, Russia, and Iceland, and has exhibited internationally, including at the Sharjah Art Museum in the United Arab Emirates and the Museum of Non-Conformist Art in St. Petersburg, Russia.
She received both her BFA and MFA in painting from the University of the Arts.
Artist Statement
My work considers the tension between the natural and the constructed—spaces where organic rhythms meet deliberate structure. Drawing from the stylized graphics and spatial compression of Japanese ukiyo-e prints, I use hard-edge abstraction and a palette rooted in nature to distill the landscape into essential forms and tonal relationships.
Light functions as both subject and guide—filtered, diffused, and held across layered surfaces, while darker areas operate as structural elements, thresholds and interruptions of light that shape form and slow the act of looking. These environments are not fixed, but shifting and perceptual, reflecting the transient nature of experience. Through this process, I aim to create spaces that feel at once familiar and intangible, inviting a contemplative engagement that is sensory, psychological, and quietly immersive.