Artist and haiku poet Annette Makino started Makino Studios in 2011 to share her Japanese-inspired art with the world. She creates paintings and collages and combines them with original haiku and other words to convey Zen humor and wisdom.

Much of Makino’s work is inspired by the Japanese tradition of haiga, artwork combined with haiku so the image and words deepen and enrich each other. Her vibrant, joyful paintings are made using sumi ink and Japanese watercolors, painted with bamboo brushes. Her richly textured collages combine hand-painted and torn washi papers from Asia with found papers such as old maps and letters.

Annette draws inspiration from the natural landscapes of Northern California and from her Japanese heritage. She says, "My work aims to express a deep appreciation for the fleeting and imperfect beauty of this world."

Growing up with a Japanese father and a Swiss mother, Makino has lived in both Japan and Europe. Since 1986, she has made her home in Arcata, California, where she lives on a redwood-covered hillside. She is married with two children.

Makino comes to her work with more than thirty years experience in writing and graphic design as a communications specialist for nonprofit organizations. She has a degree in international relations from Stanford University.

Publications: Makino’s work regularly appears in the leading English-language haiku and haiga journals, including Frogpond, Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, Acorn, Presence and DailyHaiga, among others. Her work has also appeared in many anthologies, including A New Resonance 13: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku and several Red Moon anthologies of the best English-language haiku of the year. The first full-length book of her haiku and haiga, Water and Stone: Ten Years of Art and Haiku, was published in 2021.

Awards and Shows: Makino’s poems have won honors in the Touchstone Awards, the Harold G. Henderson Haiku Contest, the Gerald Brady Senryu Contest, the Porad Haiku Award, and the ukiaHaiku Festival's Jane Reichhold International Prize, among others. The Haiku Society of America (HSA) chose one of her poems for the Museum of Haiku Literature Award. In 2022, Water and Stone was awarded Honorable Mention in the HSA Merit Book Awards.

Makino won a $10,000 Victor Thomas Jacoby award for her artistic vision and creativity in 2022. She was a finalist for Best Local Artist in the Northcoast Journal’s 2020 and 2021 Best of Humboldt contests. She has exhibited her art around Northern California, including at the Morris Graves Museum of Art, the Brenda Tuxford Gallery and the Redwood Art Association Gallery, all in Eureka, and the Corner Gallery in Ukiah, among other places.

You can follow Annette on Instagram @annettemakino.