Tomoko Terashita was born in Kyoto, Japan.

When she was little, around 7 years old, she was learning to play piano. Her teacher was like an old Mrs. Rottenmeier who had false teeth that made a unique sound. Tomoko liked seeing when the teacher wrote some word on the piano score with black pencil (she thinks it was B or HB pencil), like “gradually strong” “more carefully” “slowly”, etc, etc, with that sound. Sometimes Tomoko was imitating writing some word on the piano score with pencil.

She graduated from Saga Art College in Kyoto, where she studied oil painting.  After working as a canvas bag artisan, she decided to live in Paris.  But she couldn’t afford to buy oil paints there, and found a big collection of colored pencils at a yard sale.  She has worked in pencil ever since.

Her work has been exhibited both in Japan, and in Paris and New York.  (L’Espace Energie & Creation (Paris, 1997), Chashama Gallery (2001), Akateletecobe Sovesahva (Kyoto, 2009 and 2014)).

Tomoko Terashita has been based in Cambridge, Massachusetts since 2011.