Photo by Mika Murai

Longtime Tribecan Mizue Sawano — she has lived on Thomas and West Broadway since 1976 — has a wonderful show up at Sapar Contemporary on N. Moore until August 29 and it is absolutely worth a visit. Her work is beautiful and immersive, colorful and uplifting.

Mizue, who was born in 1941 in Japan, the daughter of a well-known novelist and journalist, began her engagement with figure painting and her now-lifelong engagement with nature in the 1950s in Paris, painting primarily in oil. Her studio practice spans over five decades, traversing Tokyo, Paris and, of course, New York.

Curator and Asia scholar Alexandra Munroe calls Mizue’s Water Lilies series “multilayered in form, structure, and color…capturing the sensual immediacy of time and site, of the very substance of light, water, and blooms.”

Also on display is a series of Sakura or Cherry Blossom paintings that she began in the 1980s.

Mizue was trained in both Japanese and Western art traditions, and earned her BFA and MFA from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music before receiving a French government scholarship in 1966 to study under Maurice Brianchon at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She relocated to New York in 1969, where she continued her studies at the Art Students League under a merit scholarship and established a long-term studio practice.

She has exhibited widely in both solo and group exhibitions in the United States (including the Brooklyn Botanic Garden), Japan, Mexico and Morocco, and her work is held in both public and private collections. Over the years, Mizue has been recognized for her contribution to cross-cultural artistic dialogue between the U.S. and Japan and is a recipient of multiple honors.

Sapar Contemporary
Through August 29
9 N. Moore | Varick & West Broadway
Tues-Sat, 10am-6pm