Sarah Brayer

Sarah Brayer's art is in the collections of the British Museum, the Smithsonian Institution's Sackler Gallery, and the American Embassy in Tokyo. Brayer was featured at the TED Conference "The Young, the Wise, the Undiscovered" in Tokyo in June 2012.

In 1985, Brayer exhibited at the Ronin Gallery in New York, and was reviewed in the NY Times, which noted Day Glow, a large, soft-ground aquatint of Charles Street in New York City that made striking use of Oriental techniques to catch dawn in lower Manhattan. In 1986 she opened her own print studio in an old kimono weaving factory in Kyoto. That same year she discovered the art of poured washi, and her interest in this technique led her to the historic washi paper center of Echizen in Fukui prefecture. She has been working in the village of Echizen ever since; the only non-Japanese artist who has worked in this 800-year-old village, home to living national treasure paper-makers. She is also the only westerner to work there continuously. In 1999, she received a grant from the College Women's Association of Japan (CWAJ), which enabled her to develop a pioneering print technique of using washi Japanese paper as a printing medium. Brayer's early works were realistic cityscapes and landscapes, figures or pathways through the snow. With continued experimentation, her imagery has become more abstract: the flow of a waterfall, the curve of a wave, or the passage of light through clouds.

Arriving in Kyoto Kyoto in 1980, Brayer studied etching with Yoshiko Fukuda and Japanese woodblock printing with Tōshi Yoshida (1911-1996) the son of influential woodblock artist Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950). Her interest in color gradation was piqued by the woodblock technique, and she subsequently applied similar gradations to her color aquatints. In 1986 Brayer began making large-scale paperworks in the historic paper village of Imadate, Echizen, Japan.

In the 70's Brayer became interested in Japanese aesthetics through the color aquatints of Mary Cassatt, and Raku-style ceramics. Arriving in Japan in 1979, she studied etching with Yoshiko Fukuda (1937-1986) and Japanese woodblock printing with Toshi Yoshida (1911-1996). In 2007, she was honored as the first western woman artist to have her work on the cover of the CWAJ Print Show catalog, the premier contemporary Japanese print show in Tokyo.

Sarah Brayer (born 1957) is an American artist who works in both Japan and the United States. She is internationally known for her poured washi paperworks, aquatint and woodblock prints. In 2013 Japan's Ministry of Culture awarded Sarah its Bunkacho Chokan Hyosho ("Commissioner of Culture Award") for dissemination of Japanese culture abroad through her creations in Echizen washi. She currently resides in Kyoto, Japan and New York, U.S.A.