Mayuko Ono Gray (b. 1978) is a Houston-based artist who primarily works in graphite. Born in Gifu, Japan, she trained in traditional Japanese calligraphy in her childhood and classical Western drawing in her teenage years. After high school, she moved to the US, earning her MFA from the University of Houston in 2007.

Ono Gray hybridizes her culturally Japanese and American life and the evolution of her artistic path while bridging East and West and exploring concepts of existence and impermanence. Her methods follow classical Asian art combing words and imagery—depicting people, animals, and still lives alongside Japanese proverbs written with hiragana and kanji characters.

Traditionally in Asian writing, the calligraphic line begins at the top right and ends toward the page’s bottom left. Ono Gray creates a single line intertwined as a metaphor for life; one entrance as birth, and all the complicated paths in between, one exit as death, representing the two doorways opening-closing our being.