Long time Chico resident multi disciplinary artist known worldwide as iPaintCreatures (aka IPC or Tazuo Yamaguchi) is an award winning performance poet, published writer, painter, illustrator, visual storyteller, musician, animator and filmmaker. He specializes in visual storytelling as he creates paintings and illustrations from his imagination that tell fantastical stories. Being full blooded Japanese, IPC specializes in painting and telling stories of Japanese Folklore Creatures called Yokai. His grandmother was an oral storyteller/poet of the Royal Court of Japan.
PC has several degrees in technology, psychology and fine arts education from CSU, Chico and is one of the artists in the teaching in schools project run by the BCOE using visual art and poetry to help Paradise Fire victims deal with the devastation of the fire.
IPC is a prolific painter and publishes his stories, visual illustration and paintings. His latest book called ‘Symphony’ is a 90 page book of sketches, paintings, drawings, illustrations, stories, poems and a graphic novella (of an epic story he is telling called Matsu – based in Fantasy, Sci-fi and Manga). He has been illustrating his stories and poems ever since a very young age. He found himself in a lot of hospital waiting rooms as his father passed when he was ten. A year later a large bone tumor was discovered on his arm and removed successfully. During this time IPC started to draw and write his stories on the back of medical forms. He was noticed by a male nurse who gave him his first watercolor set and displayed his painting, stories and drawings through out the hospital. IPC took this experience and has made it a life long discipline to document the many movements in is vast imagination through every traditional art medium available to him. This lead him to many grand opportunities in the entertainment/hi-tech industries as he went on to work directly with George Lucas (creator of Star Wars and Indiana Jones) at Skywalker ranch in Marin County CA. Doing tenured positions with the late great Steve Jobs and many other hi-tech companies as Intel, IBM, and Microsoft. Hired for his brilliant imagination and mastery of many forms of creative expression.
IPC specializes in creatures that all have remedies and remind us of many virtues as he paints them in vivid color directly from his storytelling imagination. He loves to paint huge paintings to very tiny micro paintings in every medium available to humans – graphite, pen and ink, acrylics, watercolors, oils, airbrush, pastels and many diverse digital painting/drawings and animation software.
Currently IPC paints daily making children’s storybooks that he publishes on Amazon and he is the creator the ‘next muppets’ – called The FunkyiPuppets – a international troupe of performers, voice over and voice actors. He is on the cutting edge and Is building his own Metaverse and has several epic collections of NFT art for sale on Open Sea, Kalamint, and Hic_nuk NFT minting sites.
“The arts have always been a way for me to apply creativity and express my imagination to overcome adversity and childhood trauma. Poetry and visual storytelling showed me who I truly was after my father passed and I was healed of a life threatening illness.”
Being a educator and an artist, Tazuo believes we live in one of the most exciting times. Where the arts and technology can be vehicles for learning and connecting. To be able to express each one of our uniqueness and originality through the arts and connect worldwide through technology is at the heart of a global culture that can give perspective to all our lives.
Come to see Tazuo at the Chico ART Festival, May 6 & 7, 2022. Hours are Friday from 4pm to 8 pm and Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm at St John’s Episcopal Church grounds on Floral Avenue, in Chico.
Connect on Instagram @ipaintcreatures or visit this website: https://direct.me/ipanitcreatures