Abstraction is a great medium in the hands of an artist like Okamura as he uses it to intensify the feelings he wants to convey from a simple idea like a wave to something that sublimely feels larger.
Known for his screen printing and abstract expressionist paintings, Arthur Okamura (1932–2009) was a Japanese American artist who rose to prominence in the 1960s as a book illustrator and member of an artist community based in Bolinas, California.
Arthur Okamura had an impressive artistic career working primarily in California for much of his career. He did come out of the Art Institute of Chicago, an art seminar at Yale University and the University of Chicago. And he earned a living as an art professor and teacher and his list of exhibitions and awards throughout his career is highly impressive. He was a solid artist who explored a number of different styles throughout his career.
Wave of Ur is a layered work that conjures up images within nature and a dreamy world where images and nature coalesce. The wave within the painting has an ominous and culminating feeling as there is the suggestion of water and then a frothy cresting a wave like form. And then with some of the extra detailing he throws in we feel he is suggesting other vignettes and evanescent glimpses at something else as well. In this, art mimics nature and in this painting we see why Okamura was a good artist. He draws upon aesthetics found in Japanese art and these are beautifully applied to a style of abstraction being explored in the United States in the 1950’s and early 1960’s.
Wave of Ur is an impressive and mesmerizing canvas that can hold its own in the realm of very well done works that visually take us away. Within one canvas he has the dark and murky lower right corner and then the enveloping layers of waves and darting colors that indicate other elements of nature. He calls other works from this series “Ghost Waves” and it would have been revealing to have been able to ask him about his thought process with these works. We predict that while of modest value, his better canvases at some point will garner more interest and celebration in the market.
Okamura seems to have done quite a series of works that explore the theme of water and nature. The titles are all variations that include the word water or wave and the paintings have a tonal quality within a blue gray green range that is usually moody in nature. This 1960 example is on the early side of these works which seem to continue into the mid-60’s. We feel this is a successful abstraction that melds traditional Japanese landscape painting with the edge of the avant-garde abstract expressionist work happening in America. Other Americans such as Kenzo Okada and Tetsuo Ochikubo for example have a similar approach to their work. We hope that museums will explore the work of Asian Americans in the future as there are fascinating parallels in how they approached their work which has amazing similarities. We embrace their work as we find them to be poetic, transcendental and nature oriented.
Private collection, Jersey City, NJ.
Showplace Auction, NY, 2021