“People say my paintings are the act of creation, and they are. The paintings are very much a part of life, like breathing,” said Miyoko Ito. Born on April 27, 1918 in Berkeley, CA to Japanese parents, Ito studied at the University of California, Berkeley. In her last year at college she was imprisoned in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. She went on to finish her undergraduate degree, before studying at Smith College and her receiving her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.