Cherry blossoms are part of the Japanese landscape, blooming and falling every year, appreciated all the more for their transient nature, mirroring human life. Pink is a power color for Nishimura, with a wide range of shades she loves to layer. Seen in New York, cherry blossoms seem different than in Japan; in Japan, they are wistful, beautiful, gentle yet strong, linked to the Japanese view of the spiritual world, life, and death. The work, painted in 2022, expresses human life with cherry blossoms, created by painting what she feels as a living being without a rough sketch, starting with fingers and palms based on inspiration and finishing with brushes, thereby expressing life's energy and passing it on to the beholders.

Born in Kumamoto Prefecture. Nishimura started working independently as a copywriter and a creative director after working at an advertising agency. She won several awards in Japan and abroad as a copywriter. Starting with her solo exhibition held in 2015 in Los Angeles, she has held a number of solo exhibitions worldwide including New York City, Milan, London, and Paris. Based in New York City and Tokyo, she is active around the world. She continues to powerfully express the energy of life with her unique sense of color.

The paintings of Mari Nishimura are often described as powerful and passionate. Without drawing a rough sketch, Nishimura starts out by layering colors on the canvas with her fingers and palms based on her inspiration and then follows what she has already painted with brushes to finish the work. Nishimura has loved dragons since she was a little girl. She never got tired of drawing dragons, and just kept on drawing them intently. Naturally, her works often feature dragons. Nishimura’s dragons are gentle, precious, and beautiful. Expressing the happiness abound in life and the bitterness, sadness, and sorrow in its background, she incorporates Japanese elements into her works and expresses with a unique sense of color. Nishimura mainly uses acrylic paints when drawing pop drawings. She sometimes uses mineral pigments and even sand from the premises of a shrine. Nishimura hopes to paint all deep feelings, saying that she gets an irresistible urge to paint when she is either very happy or very sad. Whenever painting, she values having dialogues with her inner self.

Seeing a color when she hears music or sees a person or a word, Nishimura has synesthesia. She says that even when her eyes are closed, she sees colors. Growing up, at times she felt uneasy about being different. Now, she sees it as her individuality that she receives people’s feelings as colors and that she sees things that other people don’t see. Nishimura’s outstanding sense of color is brought to life in her paintings. This is why her paintings are described as having distinct colors. She gets a bird’s eye view of the entire painting and her inspiration tells her which colors to use. Nishimura says that she has had a tumultuous life since childhood. “I am who I am today because I overcame all the difficulties,” Nishimura says. Always being positive in times of adversity, she expresses her energy with her paintings, which deliver that energy to the beholders.