Untitled 1980

Here's a painting by Taro Okamoto full of bold, graphic gestures and a punchy palette of reds, yellows, blues, blacks and whites. I can almost feel the artist in the act of painting, like a dance, maybe, with each mark building on the last, a vibrant conversation unfolding on the canvas. I'm thinking about how the artist must have felt, standing there, brush in hand, coaxing these forms into being. Like the white brushstrokes that curve and bend around the whole picture plane. Are they waves? Currents of air? This isn’t just about seeing; it's about sensing and feeling. Okamoto has an earlier surrealist vibe, but you can also see in this work affinities with other artists, like Miro, and even Pollock. It's as if they're all part of this big, ongoing dialogue, bouncing ideas and shapes off each other across time. And that’s what painting's all about, right? It is an ongoing exploration, full of doubt, conviction, and lots of happy accidents.