Born, Kagawa, Japan, 1944,
Warabé Aska is one of those gifted artists who also writes and has
found away to combine his enormous talents through the publishing of children’s
books. A graduate of Takamatsu Technological School, Kagawa, Japan, where
he developed and enhanced his artistic skills, Warabé immigrated
to Canada, 1979, becoming a landed immigrant, 1982. Since 1972, Warabé
has supervised solo exhibitions of his art in Japan, England, the U.S.,
and Canada. His art has also achieved global acclaim in exhibitions staged
in the Czech Republic, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Yugoslavia, and Iran.
His works have appeared on UNICEF greetings cards, are part of the permanent
collections of Japan’s Imperial Family, Hino Motors Co., Japan, Corporation
of the City of Toronto, as well as in many prominent private collections.
In 1993, he created the Official Event Poster for Earth Day. In 1993, as
well, Warabé won first prize for his art at the Tehran International
Biennale of Illustrations, Iran. Winner of many awards and cited in no
less than eight Who’s Whos, Warabé’s latest book, Lulie the Iceberg,
published in Japan, the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Italy, Taiwan, and Korea,
in collaboration with UNICEF and Her Imperial Highness Princess Takamado,
who wrote the text, was officially launched at New York’s Carnegie Hall,
October 25, 1998, generating much public awareness about the need to preserve
our fragile Ocean Planet. The paintings of Warabé Aska are often
dramatic, symbolic, and moralistic such as the striking oil, 1991, on this
page, entitled Mother Goose vs. Cloud’s Eagle which reveals a Canada goose
defending her goslings (Canada’s ten provinces) from a menacing eagle.
In the photograph above, Warabé Aska, left, stands with Her Imperial
Highness, Princess Takamado of Japan, at the Carnegie Hall launch of Lulie
the Iceberg. [Photo, courtesy Warabé Aska]