The figures in Umeko Okano’s evocative works inhabit a beautiful yet strangely transient, almost ghostly world. Attracted by interesting light effects, forms and colours, Okano paints light that slants down between buildings in the haze of a late summer afternoon or shimmers in an early dusk. Shadows lengthen, colours intensify and the figures journey on towards the horizon.

The paintings are built up and worked on for extended periods of time, expanding and deepening the painting little by little until she reaches the desired effect. This time allows the works to mature and there is an immense subtlety and elegance to them.

Okano envisions life as a journey, an ephemeral and fluid thing. She features scenes that give colour to the artist's concept of our collective life process – from Going to Returning: from Meeting to Parting, and Waiting again,  a viewpoint of us all as travellers. It is a motif evident throughout her work, a symbolic marker. The work is also an expression of Okano’s inner world and vision.