To make roses out of radishes, put them in ice-cold water, allowing them to expand. The artist Arthur Okamura (1932–2009) learned this trick as a child working in his parents’ Japanese restaurant in Long Beach, not far from Compton, where they lived after emigrating from Japan. A selection of Okamura’s pieces created between 1959 and 1972 is currently on display at San Francisco’s House of Seiko gallery in a show called Returnings, set to close on January 28.
This essay was adapted from the Alta newsletter, delivered every Thursday.
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During Okamura’s lifetime, he was celebrated as a multifaceted artist, central to the community of artists, writers, and activists of Bolinas in the late 20th century. A 1959 painting of his, titled Returnings in a Cold Spring, can be found at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Many of his paintings from this period are in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “His abstract expressionist paintings of the ’50s and early ’60s look nothing like those of his East or West Coast counterparts,” says Greg Flood, director of San Francisco’s Paul Thiebaud Gallery, which represents Okamura’s estate. “They display a singular manner of abstracting real-life inspiration into paint.”
Unlike a lot of artists of his stature and talent, Okamura worked and taught largely out of the spotlight of art centers like New York and Los Angeles. As a celebrated artist and longtime teacher who showed nationally throughout his life, Okamura otherwise maintained a low profile. According to Cole Solinger, who runs House of Seiko, Okamura “still holds immense value in a historical and contemporary context. To reintroduce him into the fold and seat him at the table with others like Miyoko Ito, Bernice Bing, and even Carlos Villa only seemed appropriate.”
In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, forcing the Okamuras, like so many other Japanese Americans across the country, into incarceration, first at the Santa Anita Assembly Center in Arcadia, then at Camp Amache, also known as the Granada Relocation Center, in southeast Colorado, where they lived for three years. Okamura worked in the screen-print shop and learned magic tricks while in the camp. Stripped of their business and California roots, the family eventually settled in Chicago, where Okamura studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating in 1954.
After meeting the poet Robert Creeley and the Los Angeles–based visual artist John Altoon during a fellowship in Spain, Okamura moved with his then-wife, Liz Tuomi, and their daughter Beth to Northern California, where, as Tuomi recalled in a 2009 obituary, “he was probably the first Japanese person ever to live in Bolinas.” It was 1959. Likely one the first interracial families in Bolinas as well, Tuomi and Okamura were also foremost among the artists and writers to live year-round in the small beach town on the other side of Mount Tamalpais.
Beach Rocks, a 1972 painting included in Returnings, appears at first glance to be almost photorealistic, adhering to a believable system of light coming in from the right and shadow gathering on the left. A consistent sheen of gray convincingly reads as moisture and light hitting an irregular surface, a feat of painting that makes the viewer think of exactly the sort of beach rocks one might bring home as a souvenir.
Okamura would come to label himself an “abstract realist,” a tricky, contradictory term, and yet one can see how, over 50 years ago, this label might apply to this painting. Atmospheric negative space and modulated brushstrokes gesture at abstraction, but Okamura’s fidelity to the rocks’ forms and lighting creates a realistic depiction of objects in space.
Living in Bolinas, Okamura began to study Zen Buddhism, which was introduced to his group of friends in the Bay Area by Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind author Shunryū Suzuki Roshi (1904–1971). One might even see Beach Rocks as reflecting the unadorned lessons of his teacher. Perhaps the rocks are the sangha, or community, that formed around Suzuki Roshi, linked by the dharma, a yellow glow that highlights all but one rock located on the lower-right corner, where Okamura’s signature is often found. Beach Rocks was painted the year after Suzuki Roshi died, the year after the 1971 San Francisco oil spill, losses that might come to an artist’s mind while walking on Agate Beach in 1972.
Rocks remained one of his many lifelong motifs. They could be beach rocks encountered on Agate Beach or the rocks of a Zen garden, symbols of permanence against the changing ripples of gravel or sand.
Like Wayne Thiebaud or Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, Okamura’s western landscapes combine multiple viewpoints in a single image. Once you know how to look, you understand how it feels to be in the landscapes he paints, where minuscule natural forms take on monumental significance.
Many artists of his generation got pigeonholed into making work to satisfy market demands, but Okamura continually experimented and evolved. So, why revisit him now? Okamura came of age at a time when U.S. art went from being in the shadow of Europe to being a world leader, albeit with a New York–centric focus. As a Japanese American artist on the West Coast, he developed a diverse body of work drawn from the particularities of his own perceptions, creating art inspired by his life in Bolinas. In the last 10 years of his life, Okamura painted large, radiant landscapes from digital photos he took with his Nikon Coolpix on his morning walks. These were printed out and then painted in the most traditional manner possible, letting the distortions and computerized colors determine his palette. Okamura saw technology, our increasing reliance on screens, as another potential trick: not something to be beholden to but a tool to be used.
As the art world—and the culture at large—finally embraces creators from a vast array of backgrounds, Okamura’s polyvalent art feels more relevant than ever, steeped as it is in notions of nationality, identity, and the meaning of home. “When you see the scope of his life accompanied by the work he created,” says Solinger, “you can see what it means to live to your true potential, something authentic to your being.” Like rocks found on the beach, whose radiance is fleeting yet resonant, Okamura’s work reminds us that amid constant change, beauty grounds us. Rocks can be precious; radishes can be roses.•
