On his canvases, artist Milt Kobayashi brings to life the female figure through luscious brushstrokes and vibrant colors. In recent years he has focused primarily on the portrait in a smaller 10-by-10-inch format, which allows for his preferred alla prima method of painting that relies on simple shapes and forms. December 9 through 24, Bonner David Galleries will host the artist’s latest exhibition Quiet Dreams, featuring approximately 20 works of art. Many pieces will be this smaller format, but there will be some larger works on view as well.
Kobayashi began his career as a watercolorist with the more muted work of Whistler being among his early inspiration. As he grew his career, the influences of Velásquez, Sorolla and Sargent began to take him down another path as did Japanese prints. “All my compositions, whatever the subject matter, were painting this idea of moving shapes around. To that end, my biggest aesthetic influence was Japanese art,” says Kobayashi. “I was drawn to the way those artists’ designs were flat and the way they truncated their figures. They’re a bit whimsical, and they’re prints, of course, so they had a shallow depth of field.”
That shallow depth in the artwork is something that can be seen in Kobayashi’s own pieces. He explains, “More realistic artists like to deal with atmosphere and space, and I don’t. I like to deal with edges and shape against shape. As a result, all my compositions and atmosphere is really 6 to 8 feet deep. In order to create more depth, I deal with the illusion of more depth. It is about where my lighting was and really what my shapes were and overlapping them. Everything was a very shallow depth of field [but creates an illusion].
The work also has strong color fields, but Kobayashi makes a point to note that he’s not a colorist. “It’s all very tonal and value driven,” he says. “I still feel like I’m a tonalist. I’m not a natural colorist doing all of these unique color items, so the way I attack that is broad fields of color and it simplifies everything for me. If you look at Japanese prints [you can see this]. Especially those by Sharaku, who is a big deal with me; he had very dominating monolithic figures filling the page. All these Japanese prints were big deals and big, billowy shapes.”
It fit with Kobayashi’s goal of being shape oriented rather than painting exactly what you see in life. He also will exaggerate his figures and their poses, with hands or limbs being slightly out of proportion or placement, but they still flow with the overall painting. This comes with working alla prima, where instead of taking the time to think, he places color and forms instinctually.
Quiet Dramas will open December 9 with a private evening reception
