Often inserting phantom characters in her paintings, Shiki Taira crafts mineral pigment works on silk that mix classical Japanese painting with contemporary sensibilities. These creatures seem to coexist with the subjects in this work, providing more lighthearted fare than terror.
“I enjoy deforming the distinctive features of a person’s skeleton when I paint that person and bring out unlimited images come to my mind while I paint phantoms,” the artist has said. “We have an idea the gods dwell in various creatures and nature traditionally in Japan. Phantom is a part of these ideas and painted and printed in subject of Ukiyo-e in Edo-period by Hokusai Katsushika and others.”
See more of Taira’s work below.
The arresting paintings of 
Raised in Los Angeles in a family of immigrants, 
Peter Saul