Yuki Toy

Yuki Toy (Yuki Toyooka Smith) is an artist and author in Los Angeles. She grew up in Hokkaido, Japan, and teaches Anatomy Illustration and Figure Drawing at several colleges in Los Angeles. She has been published in multiple medical illustration books and her art work has been hart of the curriculum at USC and Cal Tech. Yuki received an MFA from USC, Los Angeles, and a BFA from SUNY New Paltz, and worked as a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. Known for anatomical illustration in muted, pastel tones, her color pencils create a subdued and nostalgic feel-evoking a tradition that spans from Leonardo da Vinci to Nicolas Henri Jacob.

Yuki’s personal work often focuses on the absurd life that can be seen in the desert landscapes. The mirage that appears over an extended road engages people in another world for a short time. This experience transports people into the realm of imagination, where an unexpected gap lives between life and death. When these forces pull against each other in the desert, a vibrant nothingness forms in the heated friction. Just like a vanishing point in the distance; it cannot be seen, yet we know that it exists.