Born in Matsumoto, Japan 1929, kusama is known for her obsessive repetitive paintings. she engaged in very little formal training only studying for a year in 1948 at the Kyoto city specialist school of arts; very few pieces of work from this time still exist as she destroyed much of the early stuff. she brought her work to new York with a desire to become and artist in 1957.

her work began out of a use of patterns and mark making as a therapy for her, endless repetition mimicking that of her hallucinations; this however predicted the minimalist movement and pop art. The work mimics the patterns and shapes you will find in nature, realising how similar we all are in our biological make up.

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The kaleidoscopic organisms repeated gives us a feeling of insignificance, they are endless unlike us. Human brains work by recognising patterns and making an observation to inform our actions ; I feel this could feed into my theme and perhaps create fear with the repetition of inexplicable movements. her paintings replicate the process our minds go through when presented with fear, at first it seems bold and uncompromising yet with repetition the impression of danger is overcome or realised as unthreatening.