Name/Title
Western Park Apartments - Chieko Lafferty - Monet PondDescription
The ebullient Chieko Lafferty, born in Kyoto, Japan, worked as an accountant. However, her dreams always led to art. After an apprenticeship, she began designing Western-style fabric patterns. Ten years later, she visited the United States and in San Francisco she met Jack, a dashing Scot, to whom she has now been married 40 years. Chieko loves to draw, and enjoys painting still lifes, but her favorite is figure drawing. “If you can draw a circle, cylinder, box, you can draw,” Chieko explains. “The basics are so important. Sometimes it’s boring –another white bowl! But then you can go anywhere. ”Chieko enjoys reading in Japanese and murder mysteries in English, cooking all cuisines, listening to classical music, and taking walks. More than anything else, she is constantly exploring, seeking to develop her style. “There are rules, but rules are for breaking,” she laughs. “I love that!” For example, she will refigure classical compositions with a cubist technique and use origami paper for collage. “If I paint something and everyone says, ‘That’s Chieko’, that is what I want.”