Rose Hirano came to Canada in 1972. She studied at University of Western Ontario and worked in Medical Microbiology after graduating. She has been keenly aware of her passion for the arts in her teens. The opportunity came later in life. She started to paint after moving to Cochrane, Ontario in 1981. Living in a small town of 5,000 in the North was inspiring. However, it was also a daunting experience, due to the lack of peer groups and resources. She took weekend workshops with visiting artists in Timmins and Kirkland Lake. Her early watercolours resonated with the simplicity of northern landscape. The move to Brantford in 1991 gave her the opportunity to explore the right vehicles to express her ideas. She eventually finds her ‘voice’ in printmaking: each one of her work is like a page from her visual journal – entries of personal contemplations and social issues using images instead of words. She now works almost exclusively in reduction woodcut, a multi-inking process, printing from light to dark values using a single piece of wood. Each image averages ten to twelve colour layers. She has come to embrace this methodical and meditative process. Hirano regularly exhibits her work in solo and juried exhibitions. She founded the annual Art Studio Tour in the Brantford area. She sat on the Brantford’s Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant Board of Directors for 10 years, and served a 4-year term on the Creative Art Advisory Board at Mohawk College in Hamilton. She moved to Richmond Hill, Ontario in 2007 and maintains a studio gallery in the Village Core.