Picture-book author Nana Furiya has been in Slovakia for 16 years but keeps sending her works to Japan, representing a mixture of the high quality of drawing in both countries.

Since coming in 1992 to study lithography at the Slovakia Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, the 46-year-old has come into inner conflict with her style of painting.

She married a Slovak man, who was a fellow student at the school, and gave birth to daughter Namiko, now 8. She renewed her appreciation of Japanese culture and became able to positively depict the "world of humour" in the art of painting that she once aspired to achieve.

She works out of the couple's home in Pezinok, which is dotted with vineyards on the outskirts of the capital of Slovakia. Her portrayal of humans and animals is packed with a feeling of vitality and a sense of energy.

Her 37-year-old husband Peter Uchnar described her artistic style as one that "faintly contains nonsense". Furiya apparently considered his remark as the highest level of evaluation of her artistic composition, which she described as a "fusion" of Japanese and Slovak painting styles and a "blend" of as much goodness from both sides as she is able to utilise.

 Her painter-husband studied with her at the arts school and coauthored a picture book they published in Slovak. Her encounter with Slovakia came by chance.

 Having been introduced to painting at an early age by her mother who taught children private drawing lessons in Kunitachi in western Tokyo, Furiya debuted as a picture-book writer in 1985 and put out several books in Japan.

However, she was not satisfied with her performance. She called on a translator at her house one day in 1990 and was riveted by an illustration she saw in Alice in Wonderland.

The artist was Dusan Kallay, a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava and master painter who has won various awards, including the Hans Christian Andersen medal and a Grand Prix of the renowned Biennial of Illustrations Bratislava.

 "I was mesmerised by his superb combination of a picture elaborately drawn to the extent of being grotesque and a light humour," she said.

She wanted to study under him. Her dream materialised in 1992 shortly before Slovakia broke away from the then Czechoslovakia and became independent. Her life was not easy in Slovakia as it had not been too long since it gave up socialism.

But during her four years at the school, she met and married Peter, who also served as an assistant lecturer to Kallay. He has a good grasp of her artwork. She studied a new technique under Kallay's guidance but called her time in school a "period of groping for a solution".

She agonised about what she should do with the assessment she received from those around her and the style of her painting. Slovaks place importance on intricate drawing of an animal, for instance to the point of seeing into its bone structure, and took Furiya's "soft drawing" as a sign of cutting corners.The experience led her to recognise Japan anew.