Masami Teraoka

Masami Teraoka was born in 1936 in Onomichi, Hiroshima-ken, Japan.  He graduated in 1959 with a B.A. in aesthetics from Kwansei Gakuin University, and continued his education to receive a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles in 1968. 

His works integrate reality with fantasy, humor with social commentary, and the historical with the contemporary. Teraoka’s early paintings often focused on the meeting of East and West, and series such as McDonald's Hamburgers Invading Japan, New Views of Mt Fuji, and 31 Flavors Invading Japan address the impacts of economic and cultural globalization. While sexuality is a recurring theme in his work, his representation of sex shifted from positive depictions of free-love in the 1970s and early 1980s, to a deeper concern with unprotected sex as a vector for mortality and the spread of HIV in the mid-1980s.

In response to the AIDS crisis and its cultural impact, Teraoka began producing large-scale works as a means of addressing major social crises. In the 1990s, Teraoka’s narrative paintings addressed social and political issues such as sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, hypocrisy in American politics, and social repression in Russia under Vladimir Putin’s leadership. His recent large-scale paintings are inspired by Renaissance paintings and continue the narrative approach of his Ukiyo-e inspired work.

Teraoka lives and works in Waimanalo, Oahu, Hawaii, and has been represented by Catharine Clark Gallery since 1998.

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