Believing that figurative work has the ability to express identity by depicting the humor and pathos of the human condition, Barbara Ishikura uses portraiture to explore the ongoing conflict of adhering to social norms across different social classes. Ishikura is interested in looking at the female body and how it navigates social spaces and the increasingly blurred boundaries between class and culture in contemporary society. The women in her artwork often have droopy breasts, dangling cigarettes, sunburned arms, and display their unabashed sexuality while striking classical art historical poses. These women are drinking cheap beer in cans and smoking cigarettes while surrounded by working-class paraphernalia. At the same time, they inhabit beautiful interiors with lush plants, velvet drapery, books, and fancy dogs suggesting a sophisticated lifestyle. Ishikura is interested in her position as a contemporary female artist and what it means to be a woman painting another woman, thereby taking back ownership of the female nude which was historically painted by male artists.

In her recent body of work, the artist is exploring notions of good and bad taste within social class. Raised in a large family in a working-class neighborhood outside of Boston, Ishikura is a first-generation college graduate. After graduating from university, she learned Japanese, and worked in Japan where she met her partner, and together, they raised bi-racial children in the U.S.

Her adult life has been a hybrid of an unrefined upbringing and the privileged multi-cultural spaces that she occupies today. Navigating these two contrasting worlds, Ishikura is interested in the “choice” to like something of bad taste when it is against one’s better judgement. In her paintings, the artist juxtaposes objects from high and low culture in an attempt to illuminate the cultural hierarchies we create.

Barbara Ishikura received a BFA in 3D from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1985, an MA in Linguistics from Harvard University Extension in 1997, and an MFA in 2D from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2018. A figurative painter based in Boston, she won the St. Botolph Emerging Artist award in 2018, and was chosen by Art New England as one of 10 emerging artists to look for in 2019. Ishikura appeared in Big Red and Shiny in 2018, the Boston Globe in 2021 and 2023, The Arts Fuse in 2023, and ArtNet News in 2023. She had a 2-person exhibition at the Elizabeth de C. Wilson Museum at SVAC in Vermont in the summer of 2023. She received fellowships from MASSMoCA, Jentel in Wyoming, and Cill Railiag in Ireland. Her work was recently commissioned by the New York Times.