Miyuki Tanabe

Miyuki Tanabe has lived her life engaging in dialogue with plants, believing that humans, flowers, birds, butterflies, fish, and air all originated and exist as one.

She was raised in the nature-rich land of Shinhidaka Town, Hokkaido, and worked for a medical device company before embarking on her 30-year career as a floral designer. She worked in flower shops in Japan and abroad, exploring the relationship between humans and plants as she believed that plants could substitute medicine and that the sensations derived from plants could give birth to a work of art.

While engaging in floral design, she researched and practiced phytotherapy in dialogue with the stories and languages each flower and plant communicates, hoping that she could prescribe plants as a substitute for medical treatment. She took a lesson from plants that the therapy that works and matters the most is knowing and living as our true selves. Hoping to convey the truth she found, she began working as a phytotherapy artist, leaving her flower design career to live her own life and let go of the stereotypes that had bound her.

Today, she creates works that reveal the essence of plants, thinking that it’d be her greatest pleasure if those who see her work realize their own essential way of being and feel relief in their hearts.

田辺実由季は『人も花も鳥も蝶も魚も大気も自然も全て一つのもの』という思いのもとに、植物と対話して生きてきた。

自然の美しい北海道新ひだか町に育ち、医療器械の企業に勤めた後、フラワーデザイナーとして30年のキャリアを築く。植物が医療の代わりになる事と、植物から派生する感覚を元にアート作品の製作が出来るようになる事を考えていた為、人と植物との関係を探って国内外の花屋で働いた。

それぞれの草花が持つ物語や花言葉を繋ぐように植物と対話し、医療の代わりになる植物を処方できたらと思い、フラワーデザインに従事しながら植物療法を調べては実践していく。そこで植物が教えてくれたのは、本来の自分を知り、本来の自分を生きる事が一番の療法であり大切であるということであった。そのことを伝えるべく、自分らしく生き、それまでの自身を縛る固定概念を越えていく為、フラワーデザインを辞め、2021年より植物療法芸術家として活動開始。

現在は、「作品を観た人が本質的な自身の在り方に気づいて心に安堵の光を灯せたらこんなに嬉しいことはない」という想いのもと、植物の本質を現した作品を作っている。