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. Brushes she has used since childhood allow emotion to flow directly through her hand, acrylics expand the possibilities of abstraction informed by her Western training, and 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. 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.