Masami Teraoka was born in the harbour town of Onomichi, Japan, in 1936. From a young age his work was inspired by the varied and lively designs exhibited in many of the fabrics in the family's kimono shop. His love of line and colour was further cultivated by his grandmother's small collection of nineteenth century traditional woodblock prints and an early gift of a book from his father on Nihonga - Western-style painting by Japanese artists. In 1959 he began the study of aesthetics at Kwansei Gakuin University in Kobe and at the age of 25 left Japan for the United States to pursue further study. Teraoka graduated in Fine Arts from the Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, in 1968, and has participated in numerous exhibitions with his works held in many prominent international collections. From 1980 he has lived and worked in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Teraoka's art pays homage to the Japanese woodblock print artists Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1865) and Katsushika Hokusai (1759-1849), two masters of the ukiyo-e tradition. Ukiyo-e literally translates as 'pictures of the floating world' and was a popular in Japan during the Edo period (1600-1868). Ukiyo was the name given to Edo-period urban life, its fashion, entertainment and delight in erotic culture. Ukiyo-e is the art that illustrates this daily life.

Teraoka does not merely reproduce ukiyo-e technique. His satirical paintings, drawings and prints are playful contemporary dramas that illustrate the tension between cultural tradition and modern life. While studying in America Teraoka witnessed the emergence of Pop art and his early paintings equally respond to America's mass consumer culture of sex, fast-food, glamour and violence - qualities that were intrinsically set apart from his childhood in Japan where subtlety was honoured and appreciated.

Teraoka's vividly animated works employ the ukiyo-e tradition of kabuki theatre as a device through which various contemporary maladies and desires are played out. Teraoka's characters gleefully take part in often tragic, yet comic tales of human weakness and social ridicule that encompass such themes as prostitution, AIDS, environmental degradation, pollution and self-indulgence. Teraoka has a mastery of line and metaphor that cajoles historical myth and legend into contemporary stories of apparent desire and greed.

The screenprint 31 Flavors Invading Japan/French Vanilla mirrors the composition and style of a major series of paintings Teraoka produced between 1977 and 1979 titled 31 Flavors Invading Japan. Comprising seven paintings, this series continues Teraoka's playful mockery of Japan's embrace of America's throw-away fast-food culture. In the works Teraoka uses the traditional technique of Japanese woodblock print: his subject matter challenges Japanese customs. Working with senior artisans skilled in the art of this medium - a complicated and extremely labour-intensive process that can require up to 35 separate impressions in different colours from as many hand-carved surfaces - Teraoka invigorates the look and feel of this dying art in the form of screenprints.

In 31 Flavors Invading Japan/French Vanilla a traditionally dressed courtesan gazes beyond the picture frame as if expecting to be caught out indulging her culinary desires. She cautiously reaches for paper napkins to wipe up her melting ice-cream. This wad of paper is a visual metaphor commonly employed in traditional ukiyo-e prints to hint at sexual activity, an erotic construction that Teraoka consistently employs in his own works. The calligraphic text in typical Edo-period style identifies the flavour as 'French vanilla'. Teraoka has also added the character 'tare' or 'drip'. This character can be also be pronounced as 'dare', meaning 'who/whose', creating a sly double entendre which is emphasised by the inclusion of a second character shiru meaning 'to know' or 'juice'. This picture possesses deliberate textual and visual puns which carry ironic overtones meant to highlight the unpredictability of Japan's social trends and attitudes. As beads of sweat escape the courtesan's brow a cartouche announces 'Comparing things, East and West; East-West people eat smelly food'.