Living Here

Born in Japan, Machida moved to the United States as a teenager to study English at the University of Kansas. He graduated from UNLV with an MFA in 2002. “My paintings come from the heart,” he claimed in a 2014 interview with Cindi Maciolek for Luxury Las Vegas. “I want to make paintings that are good for people. Life is simpler if it’s good.” In other interviews he has said that he hopes his audience will find the work appealing and beautiful. He has drawn attention to the autobiographical aspects of his imagery – his father took him fishing as a child, he says, therefore he likes to paint fish – while critics credit him with a precocious ability to assimilate the pop sensibilities of two different cultures. “Machida often slyly refers to popular Western cultural conceits via ancient Japanese compositional formulas,” wrote Danielle Kelly in the Las Vegas Sun. “Sport fishing photos, for example”