In a small town in the Japanese countryside, Fumiko Toda spent her formative years surrounded by nature. Frequenting ponds thriving with insects and biodiversity, Toda experienced an intimacy with the natural word that is present in her paintings today. She lives and works in New York City, where the disconnection of the urban experience from the natural world is a major influence of her work, which uses colors, textures, and forms derived from her childhood. Toda's astute sense of design and craftsmanship is attributed to years of Japanese art schools; her work is obsessively intricate and precise, and bypasses both sketching and reference materials in a number of techniques, ranging from acrylic, ink, graphite, or pastel on paper to advanced printmaking methods.