"I have been painting insects since I was a girl in rural Japan. Bugs, snakes, flies, butterflies and countless other tiny fauna are both my subject and medium. I celebrate their existence in vibrant paintings and prints, and also use them as a tool to express a sense of loneliness and isolation that I carry from childhood.
I had no sense of who I was growing up in Japan - the society is so uniform and I was pushed to behave a certain way and never felt like I knew myself. I regularly escaped to a nearby pond, where I would entertain myself for hours, observing and picking up bugs and other wildlife. I enjoyed being in this new situation; it gave me a sense of myself and an understanding that the world was larger than just me."
-Fumiko Toda
