Taro Takizawa is an artist specializing in printmaking, wall vinyl installations, drawings, and 2D designs. His work blends both Western and Eastern aesthetics, with a deep appreciation for traditional printmaking processes and the art of mark-making. Takizawa is fascinated by the fusion of contemporary studio practices with traditional methods, exploring the boundaries between printmaking and installation art.

He earned his BFA with a printmaking emphasis from Central Michigan University and completed his MFA in printmaking at Syracuse University. Takizawa has exhibited his work both nationally and internationally, such as the Grand Rapids Public Museum, LUX Center for the Arts, the China Printmaking Museum, Tyger Tyger Gallery, and Kai Lin Art in Atlanta, GA. He has also participated in several artist residencies, including those at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Morgan Conservatory, GoggleWorks, and Lawrence Arts Center.

Takizawa currently serves as the Assistant Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Wilmington.

Artist Statement

My work is an intuitive process of making patterns by drawing, painting, carving, cutting, and printing. I am constantly mentally engaged with how I want to move. I look for formal reactions, ideas between the contemporary and personal history, perspective, thought, Japanese heritage, and permanent memory.

My work is about my fascination with water, its ripples, and its reflections. I am recreating my emotional reactions to how water seems to flow freely and continuously, by using recursive printmaking processes and mark-making techniques to imitate that movement. 

The patterns on the installation works and prints are forever repeating patterns in my head. And the process of creating these images is also a forever-repeating process of drawing, cutting, carving, and printing.