Matsubara Naoko was born in Tokushima, Japan in 1937. She graduated from Kyoto University in 1960 and studied at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh on a Fulbright Grant. She taught art at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Matsubara’s father was the chief priest in a Shinto shrine in Kyoto and shrines and temples became one of the major themes of her work. Her style was influenced by one of her teachers, the famed, Shiko Munakata. Her works can be found in the Art Institute of Chicago, Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress in Washington DC, and the British Museum, to name a few.