There’s a spirit in everything and Maki Yamaguchi is vividly bringing them to life

She uses real paintbrushes, real pens and real pigments to create images that slip from reality into dreams and beyond.

When Maki Yamaguchi created her first portrait illustration for The Drift magazine, she was pleased with the outcome. With fine detail and bold, gestural spontaneity, her image captured the likenesses of former New York mayor Eric Adams and former Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot in Maki’s characteristic style. She produced versions in portrait and landscape orientations: the former in black-and-white for print, the latter in colour for the web.

Unfortunately, the article and artwork were dropped, but the story is an excellent example of why a young creative should never give up. Maki dusted herself down, kept the images in her portfolio, and entered them in the 3×3 International Illustration Show 21. The work won a Merit Award, which is now just one of the many in her trophy cabinet, so to speak.

And The Drift? Well, the magazine became one of Maki’s regular clients.

Originally from Japan but now based in New York, Maki’s work is characterised by juxtaposition and balance. “I love simple, bold, abstract brushstrokes, but I also love extremely detailed, delicate, realistic pen drawings. I’m drawn to black-and-white or muted palettes as much as to highly saturated, bright colours. I feel awestruck when I see artwork that has these opposite extremes in harmony,” she says.

This sense of balance seems ever-present in her approach. On the one hand, she’s inspired by folklore and mythology and is a light sleeper whose dreams have been fed by fantasy stories and comics. Yet on the other hand, nature and scientific learning excite her mind just as much. The result is imagery full of sensitivity, arising from Maki’s thoughtful approach to art and life.

“As a Japanese person, I’m familiar with the concept that there’s a spirit in every living and non-living thing,” she explains. “The way you treat them has real consequences. I love folklore, myths, science and nature because they all draw my attention to things that I cannot see with my naked eyes or experiences I cannot have, which further fuels my imagination.”

“Whenever strange narratives or images pop up in my head, I want to capture them as something visible by drawing them on paper,” she continues.

Attentive clients scouting out her portfolio might notice a little skeleton character that appears here and there in some of her images. It looks cool and has a spooky vibe, but that’s not why she draws the character, per se.

“It’s funny and surreal to think that we all have a skeleton inside our bodies, but it became more important to me when I realised it could represent a human being devoid of gender, race, age, body shape or facial features – common biases about which become the basis for conflicts,” says Maki. “I use the character as my avatar when I want to be seen just as a ‘human’ so anyone could identify with it.”

In her artwork, she’s creating an ideal world where everyone is a skeleton and a person’s beauty is determined by their inner qualities, because, beyond that, everyone is just bones. She’s asking what society would look like in this scenario.

Alongside the mayors Adams and Lightfoot piece, one of Maki’s favourite projects so far is a conceptual cover illustration for The Writer’s Chronicle, exploring discrimination in publishing – racial, and particularly against women of colour.

Another of her favourites is a personal piece called Smoke, which won awards in the US magazines Communication Arts and Applied Arts in 2023. It’s a cityscape she left unfinished for a long time. “I learned that I should always finish drawing no matter what because the last brushstroke can change everything,” says Maki.

In the future, she’d love to see her work used in larger formats, such as signs and billboards, but in general, Maki is delighted to work on anything that has a positive impact on society. She has just signed with the agency IllustrationX.