Masami Teraoka was born in Onomichi in Japan in 1936. He received his art training at the Kwansei Gakuin University in Kobe, Japan and at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. Since 1973 he had important solo exhibitions in such renowned places as the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York or the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Although the artist uses the style of traditional Japanese woodblock printing, he is not a printmaker. His art works are watercolors! He used watercolors as he said to "mimic woodblock prints". He is one of the few artists who comment their art works. The following text explanations are by the artist himself.