Midori Furze is a Japanese-born contemporary artist, currently residing in Sydney’s Northern Beaches. She holds a qualification in teaching and she has been painting full time for four years. She has been in more than 120 group exhibitions and 6 solo exhibitions since 2002. She was a finalist in the Warringah Art Prize, Hornsby Art Prize, Northbridge Art Prize, Sydney Royal Easter Show and North Sydney Art Prize. She has won many awards, including first prize in the Figurative section and first prize in the Contemporary section at St Ives Art exhibition.

Midori’s works are influenced by her Japanese background, having studied calligraphy, Japanese music, literature and visual arts since childhood. She is also inspired by music and on her canvases Midori paints her dreams and concepts of love and music. Her art practice moves between realistic styles to highly illustrative works to free forms of abstracts.

Midori has run many innovative and successful community art events since 2009. In 2009, Midori ran a workshop, “Make up Your Mind”, which was attended by seventy mothers and daughters. Everyone enjoyed drawing with recycled make-up products such as lipstick and eye shadows. A “Make up Your Mind” art exhibition was supported by creativemums.com and it took part in the Manly Arts Festival ’09.

During the same festival, along with fellow artist Angela van Boxtel, Midori has also organised another exhibition, “Womanly”, which displayed over 100 t-shirts designed by artists all over the world across a long clothesline at Manly Cove Beach. The spectacular view attracted many visitors. She also started helping at Art in Motion group, which runs the art program for Bear Cottage – the children’s hospice in Manly, and she coordinates the workshops for the children.

In 2010, Midori was accepted to a residency program at Eramboo Artists Environment, Terrey Hills. She was inspired by the area which is situated next to Ku-Ring-Gai national park and started folding origami kangaroos and paper cranes. She also worked for the New Horizons program which is a division of North Ryde Hospital.

Several “How to Paint” articles, in which Midori shares her knowledge of art, have been published in “Fine Art & Decorative Painting” magazine (Vol. 16 No.10, Vol.16 No.11, Vol.17 No.2, Vol.17 No.3 and Vol.17 No.12).

In 2011, Midori has worked with Japanese calligrapher, Hideo Dekura for Japan Disaster charity event. She is working for a fundrasing event “Fold with Love – 1000 Paper Cranes” for Sydney Children’s Hospital in Randwick with fellow artist & photographer, Mayu Kataoka. She is also planning some collaboration works with the Kangaroo Island sculptor, Indiana James and “Lipstick Girls” workshops with Melinda Jordi and Warringah Council.

Her works are held in corporate and private collections in Australia, Europe, UK, USA and Japan.

Midori welcomes commission works and her studio in Balgowlah is open by appointment.

Website: www.midorifurze.com
Contact: midorifurze@gmail.com
Phone: 0431 895 757