Maki Kayano is a Japanese artist currently living in San Francisco, California. She was born in Hokkaido and grew up in Ibaraki in Japan with a silver tabby cat Tony and a Siberian Husky Kenta. She escaped the life of having a steady job in Japan and moved to San Francisco to study fine art. She has been working as an illustrator, a craft maker and a printmaker.  She also writes children's books.

Her work aims to provoke people's childhood memories and help bring their memories to the present. Those memories may bring out emotion, or sometimes they may come with laughter. To move a person to laughter is another of her biggest motivations for creating art. Laughter is a privilege and a quality which only humankind can have.

Her work has involved the creation of a humorous world where animals and humans are living together and are sharing laughter. She believes that all true affections are tempered with laughter. Her art is a provocation to laughter in order to express her love toward the world.

Home page: http://makizo.com