ABOUT THE ARTIST

Keiji Shinohara was born and raised in Osaka, Japan. After 10 years as an apprentice to the renowned Keiichiro Uesugi in Kyoto, he became a Master Printmaker and moved to the United States. Shinohara’s nature-based abstractions are printed on handmade kozo paper using water-based pigment onto woodblocks in the ukiyo-e style–the traditional Japanese printmaking method dating to 600 CE. Though Shinohara employs ancient methods in creating his woodblock prints, he also diverges from tradition by experimenting with ink application and different materials to add texture to his prints. He personally executes all the steps involved in the printmaking process, from carving the woodblock to printing by hand. Elegantly understated, these works are a fusion of Japanese aesthetic and Western modernism.

Keiji Shinohara has been teaching 25 years at Wesleyan University in Middletown Connecticut and has been a visiting artist nationally and internationally over 100 venues and 40 solo show including DFN Gallery, New York, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts, and Fresno Art Museum. He has received grants from the Japan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and his work is in many public collections, including the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Library of Congress. He has given lectures at the Los Angeles County Museum Los Angeles, CA, Museum of Fine Art Boston, MA, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, Arthur M. Slacker Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution.

STATEMENT

“While living in Kyoto, I trained for ten years in the traditional Japanese woodblock printing style known as Ukiyo-e. The technical foundation for my artwork is rooted in that training, accompanied by techniques of contemporary western printmaking. Yet the imagery itself is very different from historical Ukiyo-e. The process of printmaking is appealing to me because of its inherent surprises. Until I peel away the paper from the woodblock, I really don’t know what the image will look like. There is always a negotiation going on with the material. Each piece of wood brings its own character to which I must adjust each time. I may decide to change the image in order to preserve what the block is offering me.  For me, the story behind the work is very important; there is a sense of narrative that is very private. The feelings and emotions that I convey through these abstract landscapes matter most to me. Almost always my images are of nature, but it is the essence of the landscape that I want to express, not realistic accuracy.” – Keiji Shinohara