Mio Yamato was born in 1990 in Shiga, Japan. She received her B.A. and M.A. from Kyoto University of Art in Fine Art and Mixed Media, in 2013 and 2015 respectively. Upon graduation, she received the award for the excellent work from the Kyoto University of Art and Design Graduation Exhibition 2015.
Yamato's signature style reflects a fascination with the reiteration of forms. Through a careful repetition of individual and separated drops of paint or drawn lines, the images that emerge resemble irregular patterns seen in nature, such as mountain peaks and ridges or the natural undulating waves of the sea. Yamato's work is an exploration of the aesthetic diversity that is achieved when using the same technique over and over. The artist herself describes the creative process as, "the continuity of points which eventually loses order, and lines before long greatly meander. In the end the image that rises to the top is a projection of the experiences of the solitary human being called 'I', and perhaps a record of the phenomenon called living". In this way, one can illustrate Yamato's work as an extension of the self, a study into the effects of time on the patterns of life: causing things to collide, separate, and develop into a repeated design.
The pieces, aptly titled Repetition, fill the wall, allowing the viewer to both step back and take in the form that the paint drops have created as a whole, but also to explore the process and formulation of the finished piece through each individual mark. Although each piece features the same technique of repetition, the outcomes greatly vary due to the unplanned properties of the paint used. The way that the artist drops the paint onto the canvas creates a spontaneous structure of varying size and placement, further allowing for each work to fluctuate and differ, despite being created in the same way. At different instances throughout Yamato's pieces, the paint drops spill into each other, creating filled areas of colour, contrasted with the blank white areas of exposed canvas. The artist uses one colour for each piece against a white canvas to allow the structure of the repetition technique to be the main focus of the work.
