Keisho Okayama
Keisho Okayama was born in Osaka, Japan, and emigrated to the United States at the age of two. He was the son of Reverend Zenkai Okayama (1898–1973), who became the second-highest ranking priest of the Pure Land sect of Buddhism in the United States. The artist’s ethnicity and his father’s influential position led to the family’s incarceration within the Japanese camp at Topaz, Utah, for the duration of World War II. Okayama was deeply affected by his camp experiences, as well as his father’s later alienation from the Buddhist church infrastructure. He studied art at the University of California, Los Angeles, during the 1950s and 1960s, subsequently producing work as an independent painter over a fifty-year period in Los Angeles.
Despite the remarkable, often monumentally sized paintings that he produced, Okayama remained little-known during his lifetime and never exhibited beyond the greater West Coast. Even more striking, he has not been included in any of the prominent recent projects concerning the creative lives of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. The sixteen works by Keisho Okayama introduce for the first time to a national audience the range of the artist’s mastery over the course of a prolific career as a painter. The works focus on the artist’s complex family history within Pure Land Buddhism and the difficult questions of personal identity he faced as an intergenerational American of Japanese descent.
Stephanie
1975
15 x 11 in.
Watercolor on paper
Estate of the artist, Los Angeles, California
Untitled
1975
15 x 11 in.
Watercolor on paper
Estate of the artist, Los Angeles, California
Anguished Face with White Circle
1985
70 x 36.5 in.
Acrylic on canvas
Estate of the artist, Los Angeles, California
Head III / Face with Big Ear
1985
35 x 23 in.
Acrylic on paper
Private collection
Fayum Figure
1985
88.5 x 25 in.
Acrylic on paper
Estate of the artist, Los Angeles, California
Descending Figure
(Grey Face)
1985
102.25 x 45.5 in.
Acrylic on paper
Estate of the artist, Los Angeles, California
Bath
1987
70 x 48 in.
Acrylic on canvas
Estate of the artist, Los Angeles, California
Central Figure with Two Attendant Figures
(Boca Raton)
1988
107 x 83.5 in.
Acrylic on canvas
Estate of the artist, Los Angeles, California
Passage
1988
72.5 x 95.5 in.
Acrylic on canvas
Estate of the artist, Los Angeles, California
Funeral
1989
70.25 x 44.5 in.
Acrylic on canvas
Estate of the artist, Los Angeles, California
Doorway
1989
70.5 x 38.5 in.
Acrylic on canvas
Estate of the artist, Los Angeles, California
Yellow Light
(Intimate Gesture)
1990
52.5 x 32.5 in.
Acrylic on canvas
Estate of the artist, Los Angeles, California
Untitled
1994
14 x 10 in.
Graphite and acrylic on paper
Private collection
Untitled
1994
11 x 7.5 in.
Graphite and acrylic on paper
Estate of the artist, Los Angeles, California
#50
1994
15 x 11 in.
Graphite and acrylic on paper
Estate of the artist, Los Angeles, California
Gold over Green
2015
57 x 35.5 in.
Acrylic on canvas
Estate of the artist, Los Angeles, California