A Journey
ARTIST BIO
Dear Friends,
I have seen how art heals and transforms lives; therefore, I greatly appreciate this opportunity to share what I have learned. After a serious illness, I was confined to a wheelchair and had to abandon my career as a research scientist at Columbia University. Since then, my life’s work has become that of bringing people together through the arts – bringing them together across cultures and across generations. I have learned that art opens doors, enabling empathy and communication between people who would normally not interact with one another. For me, this whole-person approach has become a way of healing and helping others heal. Part of the healing is this: when we are able to listen deeply to other people through the arts, we become better at inner dialogue and self-reflection as well. Then everything in life can become a form of art.
Shortly after I moved to Vancouver from NYC, in 2009, I started the Artists-in-Residence salon. I opened my living room for creative dialogue and watched genuine connections happen between my neighbors. After ten years, I have hosted over 150 salons, and over 2,000 enthusiastic participants. In 2014, I formed a nonprofit group: the Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society (VACS). VACS’s goal is to use the sharing of art to find deeper understandings of how we navigate the inevitable transformations of identity that happen as we age and as we connect with other cultures. We have learned that sharing feelings and ways of looking, through art, can promote flexible and resilient ways of negotiating the ongoing process of remaking ourselves. Beyond that, because it fosters empathy and connection, probing our identities in this way helps us form deeper and healthier communities. I look forward to sharing my discoveries with the larger community.
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My painting is part of the exploration of the possibilities of shared artistic identity with people before us, around us, and after us, and the appreciation for the infinite things that life and nature will teach us. There’s beauty everywhere and I am just witnessing and moved by the values. In a sense, my painting is an ode to life and about what the Greek philosophers beautifully termed eudaimonia or human flourishing.
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Keiko Honda, Ph.D., MPH
January 2020
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About Keiko
Keiko Honda is a scientist, writer, community organizer and painter. She holds a PhD in international community health from New York University, but when she suddenly contracted a rare autoimmune disease that confined her to a wheelchair for life, she had to leave her career in research at Columbia University in New York. After moving to Vancouver in 2009, Keiko started hosting artist salons, for which she was awarded the City of Vancouver’s Remarkable Women award in 2014. Shortly thereafter, she founded the Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society to bridge generations and cultures through the arts and to offer members of marginalized communities in Vancouver opportunities for artistic self-discovery. She teaches the aesthetics of co-creation in the Liberal Arts and 55+ Program at Simon Fraser University. She lives in Vancouver, BC, and enjoys watercolour painting and hosting her salons.