Audrey Kawasaki: A Mere Moment

Audrey Kawasaki is a 28-year-old Japanese-American painter based in Los Angeles.  Though her professional training amounts to little more than a two-year stint at the Pratt Institute in New York City, her art creates a lasting impression.

With her primary materials of oil and wood, Kawasaki renders alluring, nymph-like girls at the peak of their sexual discovery in sensually innocent circumstances.  Heavily influenced by Japanese manga and Art Nouveau paintings, Audrey creates melancholic worlds in which her enigmatic characters struggle to come to terms with adolescence, prompting her viewers to do the same.

“Wood really lends itself to the atmosphere of the painting. . . . The tones and textures of certain woods are familiar and calming – even nostalgic, in a way.  I’m pretty picky with wood types (and so are the oil paints), but if I’ve found a perfect piece – I can feel immediately grounded, and pieces will come out with ease.  The specific grain in each piece definitely has a large part in beginning the line process, in a nicely organic and unpredictable way.  That might be what I love most.” (NY Arts Mag)







“The girls are like ghosts – real but not real,” Kawasaki says in a Vogue interview.  ”I paint them because they are distant, elusive, and unattainable, and slip right through your hands.  They are something I chase after, and that I grasp onto for a mere moment, and am forced to let go, and that is what keeps me painting.”

For more images and information, visit Audrey’s website and journal.