Since early childhood in her native Tokyo, painting and creating art has been Mari Reigh’s sanctuary. Aged 11, inspired by the work of Edgar Ende and by the loss of her mother, she found her language — surrealism. She continued to paint through her teens and twenties while building a career as an illustrator. But moving from Japan to the UK in 2000, she stopped painting for nearly twenty years.

That changed in 2020, when lockdown and an autism diagnosis led her back to her brushes. Since then, painting has become a practice of self-expression and acceptance — a journey back to herself. Today her work spans oil and acrylic on canvas, mixed-media collage with paper and fabric etc and 3D sculpture.