My Tokyo: Yayoi Kusama

Famed Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama may often be misunderstood, but her work is rarely mistaken for anyone else's. An entire room in red with white polka dots; outsized flowers atop huge stems, petals covered with polka dots; rain in a mirrored room; silver spheres floating on a lake.

Born in 1929 in Nagano Prefecture, Kusama was severely physically abused as a young child by her mother and has experienced hallucinations and obsessive thoughts and behavior ever since.

The 80-year-old icon traces her earliest artistic endeavors to the age of 10, when she began experimenting with mesh and polka dots -- staples that have contributed to a lifelong motif she calls 'infinity nets' -- to create fantastic, swirling paintings in oil, pastel and watercolor.

CNNGo: You had a powerful exhibit this past summer in New York. How was it received?

Yayoi Kusama: My exhibitions at the Gagosian Gallery, both in New York and in Beverley Hills, were a great success. They were exhibitions of my new works with the latest ideas presented for the first time. The images those new pieces projected were the most splendorous ever in my creative career. Now our Earth is swarmed with issues such as life, death, illness, wars, economic crises and many others. It is time that we sing out loud the message, 'Love forever.'