Coco Masuda
Nationality: JP
Currently Living: New York City, USA
Member Since: 10/18/2006
“After I created an artwork, Dancing with Angels, for the back cover of a magazine in 2005, I started getting calls from women all over the states wanting to have a print of it. They told me "Just looking at it made me feel happy!". That sure made me feel good. I promised them that I will make the print available, and realized how I could spread happiness in people’s life through my artwork.”
New York-based artist Coco Masuda had been working the world over creating illustration for such diverse clients as United Nations, US Courts, United Airlines, Starbucks and Estée Lauder. In 1992, she made a record by illustrating the covers of "Time", "Newsweek" and "US News & World Report"— all within a two week period. In 1994, She created the poster for the historic event, “The Women’s Conference in Beijing”, and 10 years later, UN came to Coco again to create another poster for the conference, “Beijing+10” which was held in New York City. The exposure of the Beijing poster brought United States Court as a client, and she has had a long and fruitful relationship with them having created over 12 posters.
Though Coco enjoyed her successful career, she started feeling the need to grow and change as an artist. Then the arrival of her daughter, Anna, in the spring of 2001 fundamentally changed Coco’s lifestyle of a workaholic illustrator. Now she accepts limited amount of commissions, concentrates her efforts on fine art for galleries, and numerous projects focusing on licensing.
Having grown up in Japan, where the decorative arts are taken seriously, helped to develop Coco's intuitive sense of style and color. Since Graduating Parsons School of Design in New York in 1983, Coco has seen her style develop from that of a designer using airbrush, to a more painterly quality of today.
