The practice
Paint by numbers
A paint-by-numbers kit promises that anyone can finish the picture: every area is numbered, every number has a colour, and the instructions tell you what to do. Michiko Yao uses that promise — and the ways it fails — as the spine of her work.
Three ways of using the system
- Following the instructions. An image is enlarged and painted exactly as the key dictates — as in Fuji Apple, where the finished apple becomes a portrait of a Japanese fruit grown in California.
- Refusing to finish. Canvases stay at the drawing stage, all numbered outlines and no colour, as in Summer Trip and Three Girls: the memory is present only as an instruction, waiting to be filled in.
- Handing over the brush. Visitors are asked to colour the blanks in as they wish, with no instructions at all — the participatory installation Color in as You Wish.
Where the numbers take over
In the largest works the numbering stops describing an image and becomes the image. Untitled (Sea II) is a canvas roughly seven by twelve feet covered edge to edge in pale numbered marks — “the overwhelming tyranny of numbers”, as the artist puts it. The Small Creature Series applies the same key to insects and pond life, painting each small panel while the palette itself is named after landscapes: rice field, mountain, grass, frog.
Editions: T-shirts and cards
Images from the Small Creature Series became a small edition: a Paint by Numbers T-shirt in a collector's can — fly, frog and dragonfly designs, in men's S–XL, women's M–L and baby's size 2 — and a Paint by Numbers greeting card.
They were sold at Bazaar Bizarre at the Shrine Auditorium Expo Center in Los Angeles in December 2005.
For availability of editions, write to info@michikoyao.com.
