Shiina is a Japanese-born, London-based artist whose paintings explore the traces of human presence and the beauty of imperfection. In a world often dominated by polished and reproducible images, her work emphasises the unrepeatable, spontaneous gestures that arise from emotion.

Using Japanese calligraphy brushes, acrylic paint, and washi paper, she creates intuitive, one-of-a-kind works that reveal the marks of her hand as both record and “trace” of lived feeling. Having painted with brushes since childhood, Shiina continues to use them as a way to translate emotion directly through the body — connecting her earliest experiences of making with her current practice. Acrylics expand the possibilities of abstraction informed by her Western training, while washi, with its irregular texture, receives each mark as if absorbing the emotion itself.

Rather than replicating traditional Japanese forms, Shiina draws from their underlying sensibility—the belief that beauty exists in the unseen, the imperfect, and the transient—and brings this aesthetic into contemporary abstraction. Through this process, she seeks to create a space where quiet emotion and human fragility can coexist, inviting viewers to rediscover a gentle, unguarded sense of being.

Her paintings open a quiet space where vulnerability, imperfection, and honesty can be felt. What remains on the surface are traces of human experience, leaving room for contemplation beyond words.