Steve Light: "Naoko Haruta and the Arboreal Imagination" 3:A.M. magazine, February 2016: http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/naoko-haruta-and-the-arboreal-imagination/ "...The work of the contemporary Japanese painter, Naoko Haruta, is a marvelous counter to the prevailing indecisiveness that has beset painting during the last sixty years. With eloquence and equanimity, finesse and fancy, but with steadfastness too, the work of Naoko Haruta says at once "No more fear!" No! our epoch and all the more its painters need not assume that painting whether abstract or figurative must be self-deprecating, timid, received, prefabricated, "provisional", etc. nor need painting contort itself into crypto- "strategic" poses and pretexts in obedient answer to diktats both external and internal..."