Ryoko Goto makes art that emerges from personal memory and quiet attention.

 

As a child, she often accepted what was offered, especially when others chose for her, before she had time to decide for herself. This tendency continued into adulthood in Japan, making it difficult at times to connect with her own preferences.

Later, after relocating to New York, things began to shift. There, she was often asked, "What do you think?" That question invited her to turn inward, and she began to reconnect more deeply with her own sensibilities.

In parallel with this shift, long before she moved to New York, she had encountered the work of Jackson Pollock in Japan at the age of 18. That moment stayed with her, drawing her toward abstract expression as a way to hold unspoken emotion without explanation. 

Today, her work focuses on translating what quietly resonates within her into visual form.

 

 

Her work often begins from personal experience, but opens toward broader, universal themes.

 

Believing everything has layers, she handles even weighty subjects gently, offering alternative perspectives. Her work explores not only what is visible but also the feelings, sensations, and atmosphere that surround them.

 

Through ongoing practice in New York, Goto has continued to explore abstract expressionism more deeply.

 

At the same time, she has become more aware of being Japanese, not as a fixed identity, but as something that quietly shapes her sense of space, form, and time.

 

In 2020, she studied Japanese Zen gardens and experienced a deep, unexpected recognition as if something essential had been quietly waiting inside her all along. 

 

 

Rather than explaining Zen, she holds onto certain impressions that continue to resonate: a sense of letting things be, of suggesting without declaring.  

She felt an intuitive alignment with these sensibilities, and they continue to quietly shape her process.

For many years, she assisted with an annual ceremony at a temple connected to her father's work. She had always found the place unusually comforting, though she didn't think much about why.
Years later, she learned that the temple belonged to the Sōtō school of Zen, a discovery that quietly made sense of something she had felt all along.

 

Goto selects materials and techniques intuitively, in response to each theme.
Ink, paper, gold leaf, and oil paint, among others, are materials she works with, chosen not for their symbolism, but for their texture, weight, and the way they respond to the hand. 

She sees materials not as metaphors, but as collaborators in the act of making.

 

For Goto, abstract expression is not about providing answers.
She avoids fixed interpretations, valuing openness and personal response. 

  

She sees art as a space – open to whoever steps into it, just as they are.

 

When she was a student, a mentor once told her, “Art is a noble kind of play.” At the time, she felt she understood it, in a way. Now she feels that understanding has shifted—shaped by time and experience.