White and Brown 1972

Kenzo Okada’s ‘White and Brown’ emerges as an arrangement of muted tones, most likely oil on canvas, where the surface appears built up through layers of color. I can imagine Okada standing before his canvas, brush in hand, making one mark, then another, each responding to the last, slowly building the composition. The painting almost resembles a puzzle made from solid colour blocks. There’s a real push-and-pull feel in this painting, a sense of shapes shifting and settling. The artist may have been looking at the work of other abstract painters such as Mark Rothko or Agnes Martin, who also explored the expressive potential of colour. It could also relate to the earlier cubist work of Picasso or Braque in the way it fragments the picture plane. Okada, like all painters, is involved in an ongoing conversation with artists across time, influencing and being influenced by their work. The painting invites us to slow down, look closely, and consider the many ways of seeing and experiencing the world through the language of abstraction.