Osamu Kishi was born in Wakayama Prefecture in 1949. Possessing an unusual interest in Japanese Zen Buddhist philosophy when he was in high school, he entered Ryukoku University in Kyoto and majored in philosophy. While engaged in his university studies, he also pursued another childhood passion, oil-painting, under the close supervision of the painter, Takeo Saita. After graduating from Ryukoku University, he worked in a textile dyeing studio that specialized in a style of surface design known as Yuzen-zome, but continued his oil painting. Soon, thereafter, his works were exhibited in several exhibitions of Japanese painting b
y independent art association. In 1978, a tour throughout Europe provided him an opportunity to see great museums and major collection of Western painting. This trip served as an inspiration for him to search for his own independent style of painting. When he moved to Tokyo in 1975 he began to develop a style of collage composition that incorporated painting and techniques he had learned from textile dyeing. In 1980 he established his own studio in Tokyo, where he produced a successful line of silk kimonos with his distinctive modern painted designs. In 1990s his new, signature textile designs were included in exhibitions throughout Japan and he produced several interesting textiles upon commission, such as a contemporary kesa for a monk at Jishoin temple in Tokyo.
As a young artist engaged in Western techniques of oil painting, Osamu Kishi was always trying to find "new" colors in his work. When he eventually found the colorations he sought, it was not in his oil painting nor in Europe, but as a textile artist in his own country during a period of time in which he was engaged in a successful career as a designer and dyer of silk kimono. It was through the process of dyeing that he discovered the multiple colorations contained in the very darkest end of the spectrum and the translucence of the brighter colors. But it was the discovery of Japan's famous Ohshima tsumugi that began to whet his appetite for silk as a surface for painting not only kimono, but also works of art. Ohshima tsumugi, best known for its sophisticated kasuri patterns, originated on Amami island, in Kyushu, and its woven technique involves silk threads dyed in mineral rich mud. He took his experiences from the dyeing studio back into his painting studio, exploring these extreme contrasts between the dark and the pale, translucent colorations.
The elegance of the Japanese kimono and the gracefulness of the garment when worn--for which he uses the word Miyabi (classic gracefulness)--also informs the style of his abstract paintings which are dominated by the use of geometric forms. Subsequently in his paintings he began to pull out sections of the dark warp threads to reveal the gleaming colors remaining on the light weft, and under painted images that subtly suggest the Zen-inspired and the philosophical and poetic motifs of his abstract paintings.
Mr. Kishi has continued to develop his collage style and now devotes himself almost exclusively to paining.
