blue deer Painting

1974 Born in Mie Prefecture 1977 With her father’s love for art, RIO UMEZAWA started studying painting and handicraft from the local artist, Mr. Minerou Ohura at the age of three. RIO, who loved surrealism painters like Picasso and Dali as a child, discovered American pop art through Ohura when she was in 3rd grade which lead her to dream about going to the US to learn art someday. 1989 At the age of 15, RIO moved to America after middle school graduation to study painting. 1990 RIO entered an art high school, the Cambridge School of Weston, in Massachusetts, where she took lessons in oil painting, acrylic painting, silk screen and etching. She also tried dance, music, voice and musical lessons to expose herself to various types of art. 1992 Enrolled at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco, California as a Fine Art major. 1994 To expand her horizon, RIO traveled to Australia for 1 year of working holiday. 1995 RIO returned to Japan and started working at an import trading company in Osaka. However, she leaves the job to make time for art while taking up various part time jobs. Around this time, she also slowly started her career in design. 1998 A producer of community radio station discovered RIO when she was singing in a band, which she formed with her friends for pure fun, which lead to her sudden debut as a radio DJ. After few auditions and with her love for music, RIO became a voice of FM Osaka, ZIP-FM (Nagoya) and nationwide radio network JFN. Since then, her schedule kept getting busier and busier with more TV appearances, event MC slots and various narration works. As her voice job became more successful, the time left to hold her paint brushes became less. She was only able to hold an exhibit every few years which definitely wasn’t enough. During that time, she started drawing with thin black pen on a sketchbook to relieve stress. 2013 RIO hosted an exhibit in Osaka and Tokyo featuring grid series that are drawn by only black markers on canvas. As her lines got finer and more delicate, her signature “MINIATURE” series came into life. 2014 After many sleepless nights, as she entered her 40’s, she went all in for the artist career and left her radio programs to relocate to Tokyo. Since then, RIO’s colorful and delicate works have been recognized around the world, including the finalist exhibit at International Art Festival in New York.