Join artist Naoko Matsubara for a talk about her printmaking practice and her current solo exhibition at the AGO, Naoko Matsubara.

Naoko Matsubara is a distinguished Japanese-Canadian woodcut print artist based in Oakville, Ontario. She was born in 1937 on Shikoku Island into a Shinto family, and grew up in Kyoto. She completed a BFA at the Kyoto Academy of Fine Art in 1960 and was a Fulbright Scholar at what is now Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, where she completed her MFA in 1962. Matsubara was a Special Invited Student at the Royal College of Art in London that same year. After travelling extensively in Europe and Asia, the artist returned to Japan for two years, before returning to the United States. There she worked as assistant to the German-American professor, publisher and illustrator Fritz Eichenberg, and also taught at the Pratt Institute of Graphic Art in New York, as well as at the University of Rhode Island. 

 Since 1960 Matsubara has had more than 75 solo exhibitions, in the USA, Canada, Japan, England, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Holland and Mexico. She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions. Her work is held in major public institutions worldwide such as the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, USA; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Detroit Institute of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Buffalo AKG Art Museum; the British Museum in London; the Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art; among many others. Matsubara is represented by Abbozzo Gallery in Toronto.

Renée van der Avoird is the Associate Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Specializing in work by modern and contemporary Canadian women artists, she has curated exhibitions including Pacita Abad (2024); Sarindar Dhaliwal: When I grow up I want to be a namer of paint colours (2023); Denyse Thomasos: just beyond (2022); Kim Ondaatje: The House on Piccadilly Street (2021); and Betty Goodwin: Moving Towards Fire (2019). Prior to joining the AGO in 2018, van der Avoird held positions as Associate Curator/Registrar at the MacLaren Art Centre, Barrie; Assistant Director of Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto; and Curatorial Mentor at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. She has contributed writing to various periodicals including Border Crossings, C Magazine, Black Flash, and exhibitions such as Russna Kaur: DREAM MACHINE (try walking on a path of splinters with no shoes) (W Projects, 2023); Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment (McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 2021); and Magnetic North: Imagining Canada in Painting 1910-1940 (Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, (2021).