Artist Frank Okada played a significant role in the modern art history
of the Pacific Northwest. Born a Nisei in 1931, he was raised in
Seattle's International District and throughout his life retained its
influences and his vivid memories in his art. From his first painting
award -- received at the Washington State fair -- until his death in
2000, he worked at the confluence of regional art, Asian culture, and
national art movements.
At the beginning of his career, Okada received a series of prominent
fellowships -- John Hay Whitney in 1957, Fulbright in 1959, and
Guggenheim in 1966-67. He was greatly influenced by the artists he met
and was a close observer of the art scenes in New York, Paris, and Kyoto
in an effort to find his own style of painting. He began teaching
painting at the University of Oregon in 1969, a tenure that lasted
almost thirty years. His work from the seventies, eighties, and nineties
balanced forms and colors in intensely worked surfaces. The color blocks
gradually became more intellectually structured and his compositions
more expressive as he made his colors more powerful. As Nakane notes,
"without recognizable reference to nature or his own personality, he
created a texture that brought light to a field of color. . . . In order
to appreciate his paintings, one needs to spend time observing how the
colors respond to the changes of light throughout the day."
