SAKI & BITCHES
All photos sourced: @sakiandbitches
Saki&Bitches is a daring Japanese born, London based artist painting “bitches” all over the city. She spends her days sharpening pencils with the OLFA SAC-1 Tool 30°, sipping warm rooibos tea and nibbling on dark chocolate as she creates art of the likes never seen before.
Influenced by manga and a wild spirit, Saki’s work is a depiction of nude, busty women with exaggerated features. Using color, curves, and boldness, her paintings are depictions of the modern and the old, as can be seen by her street art all over London picturing green, eerie women with archaic Japanese hairstyles. Having spent time in the fashion industry as a make-up artist for seven years, Saki’s time in Tokyo, New York, and London made her switch from skin to canvas to street art.
Using the female form to elicit erotic themes, sensuality, and controversy, her art depicts the ideal women – curvy, flawed, beautiful, crazy and unique. Her signature hyper-sexualized characters and her trademark theme of hourglass prostitutes and erotica are synonymous with her style. Saki’s London exhibition titled “The Orchid and the White Foxes” showcased voluptuous women and themes of eroticism and sex that would make any ordinary person gasp. The raw and unapologetic depiction of women is reminiscent of Tokyo’s red-light district known to be a playground for the rich, where shy Geishas in silk were the entertainers of the night. Paralleling Geishas with her bare, heavy set “bitches,” Saki and her bitches have turned the canvas into a platform voice, values and beliefs.
Saki paints transparent and real women. Using simple mediums like a black pencil or bold paint, she vocalizes the taboo topics that are whispered amongst us – erotica, sexual experimentalism, and body image. Her women are loudly curvaceous with heavy set bosoms, highlighting the beauty of the female figure, and with elaborate hairstyles, her paintings and sketches celebrate the beauty of the female life as we know it.
In this changing world where sexual freedom, expression, and individuality is a luxury, Saki fights the status quo with her bitches, painting them into freedom and breathing life into them with her talent and fearlessness. If you’re ever walking around London and a bodacious portrait makes you jump two steps back, know Saki and her bitches have been there.
