Miyuki Tanobe


Miyuki Tanobe is a Japanese-born Canadian painter, based in Montreal, Quebec. She is known for her paintings of the everyday life of Montreal residents.
Her work is in the collections of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée du Québec, Lavalin, Pratt & Whitney, and Shell Canada, and Selection du Reader’s Digest. She is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

Early life and education

Tanobe was born in 1937 in Morioka, Japan. Because there was a violent snowstorm raging on the day she was born, her parents named her Miyuki, which means "deep snow". Tanobe attended Japanese primary and secondary schools.
In 1963, possessing incipient artistic gifts, she painted at the studio of La Grande Chaumière in Paris before registering at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, France's leading school of fine arts. Miyuki Tanobe’s arrival in Canada in 1971 came as a result of a chance meeting in Paris with Maurice Savignac, her future husband, a French Canadian from Montreal.

Work

Miyuki Tanobe’s work reflects a freedom of action. She paints principally on rigid supports such as wood or masonite sheets. Her panels are filled with scenes that she has observed like children playing hockey.
Her modern primitive works depict everyday life in the working-class neighborhoods of Montreal with humour and great sensitivity.
She transforms "humble and unavoidable reality" by reformulating it, adding or deleting elements depending on her assessment of their contribution to the scene. A painting by Miyuki Tanobe goes to the heart of the matter: the artist is interested in opening the viewers' eyes so that they may better see the familiar and adjust their perceptions of what they think they know.
In 1980 Tanobe illustrates the song "Gens de mon pays" by Gilles Vigneault and in 1983 she creates pictures for The Tin Flute by Gabrielle Roy.
The colours in Miyuki’s paintings are rich and full of contrast. Working with superimposed layers and applying pigments with her pliable, flexible Japanese brush, Miyuki Tanobe succeeds in revealing unexpected aspects of the objects and people she depicts without making them difficult to read. She paints in Nihonga.
She is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
In 2012 a mural was painted for Tanobe in Verdun.

Collections

Her work is found in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Musée de Joliette, Musée Saidye Bronfman, Montréal.

Recognition

In 1979, she was the subject of a National Film Board of Canada documentary short My Floating World: Miyuki Tanobe, directed by Ian Rankin, Stephan Steinhouse and Marc F. Voizard.