There is a town in northern Nevada where steam locomotives still rule the railroad. The name of this town is Ely Nevada. Ely is one of the most remote cities in the contiguous United States. It was once the largest city in Nevada, now it is almost forgotten, just a crossroads where US 50, 93 and 6 all met to trade traffic.
My visit to Ely in the Summer 2011 was the flash point that started my adventure with painting portraits of locomotives. Their beauty, power, earthy smell and evocative sound immediately fascinated me.
Captivating too were their elegant, romantic profiles, mechanical complexity, and Victorian design sensibilities. Fire breathing, smoke belching cacophony of motion gives each engine its own vibrant personality! Just as complex as the engines themselves are the volunteers who still have the skills to keep the boilers hot and the wheels turning.
It is my new‐found passion to convey the beauty of these 19th century relics to a 21st Century audience.
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Not widely known outside the boundaries of Spain or Japan, is the fact the many Japanese women are very enthusiastic participants in the Flamenco art form.
One of the theories of this phenomenon is that the Japanese have an outlook on life in which self-development through any action that involves personal growth, be it an artistic, academic or a cultural endeavor, is absolutely necessary to promote one’s personal growth. The highly achieved art form of Flamenco dancing, with its pure expression of passion and emotion, attract many Japanese due to the fact that under the strict social norms and behavior of their own culture, where the showing of emotion and feeling is completely cancelled out, allows them the opportunity to express these repressed feelings freely and without restriction.
Yoko Mazza is one of these people who were attracted by this art form, and she would like express these feelings by not only dancing, also by capturing it on canvas.
“Noh” mask, the most important element of Japan’s traditional performing arts “Noh”, continually attracts Yoko as a motif for her paintings. Slight adjustments in the position of the mask and light can expose the viewer to the full tapestry of human emotions and feelings such as - love, hate, sadness, jealousy, anger, depression and much much more.
By painting the wood sculpted “Noh” mask on canvas, she is hoping to be able to transform the canvas into “Noh” theatre. She wants to be able to portray "Life Events and Fantasies" using the image of the mask.
During the night, she often visualizes and awaken to the image in the morning. The image does not fulfill itself until it takes on a life of its own as it introduces itself on her canvas and finally she meets the mask face to face.