About Tamie Okuyama

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• When you meet Tokyo artist Tamie Okuyama, whose paintings reflect her strong world view of humans fundamentally intertwined with nature and the universe, you may be taken aback. Her ready smile, effervescent personality and great curiosity about humankind may not be what you expect from an artist whose paintings have a deep belief system as their foundation. An unusual blend of talent, discipline and warmth, Ms. Okuyama is reflective about the path she took to her recognition and success in the art world.
  Her art career has included:
  • Extensive travel including to what she calls “uncivilized” places for experience and inspiration;
  • Exhibitions of her work at galleries throughout the world;
  • Awards, prizes and recognition for her work including the 35th Yasui Award and the 31st Hiroshima Culture Prize;
  • A memorable stint teaching graduate-level art at Onomichi University, Hiroshima, when she was recruited to head the oil painting curriculum.

The Early Years

• Tamie Okuyama was born in Jōetsu City, Japan. Perhaps as an omen to her future, on the day of her birth the city witnessed the heaviest snowstorm in 40 years. Her family moved to Tokyo when she was a toddler to live at her paternal grandfather’s estate but despite the large home and beautiful gardens, financial resources were very limited and the estate confining. She was unable to attend kindergarten and had no books, toys or even a single friend to play with, just her sister and brother. She learned at a very young age to commune with nature.

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• Once she entered school, she was almost invisible. Her teachers skipped over her when each of the children in class rose to read in rotation. One day, she leaped to her feet before she could be passed over and read aloud at the top of her lungs. Today, we would say she “found her voice” early in life.

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• It was her older sister who was deemed to be the talented artist and who was given special privileges and education. “My sister was very good at drawing and even as a child the newspapers often mentioned her as a ‘prodigy,’” Ms. Okuyama explains. Yet her sister abandoned the pursuit of art upon entering the College of Fine Arts with the highest grades. Tamie had planned to be an architect – she was a Gaudi aficionado and later studied art in Spain -- but was strongly discouraged from doing so, told there would be no room in Japanese society for a successful female architect. Instead she chose to study design at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where, partly from discomfort with praise and recognition, she almost sabotaged her very early academic achievements – top of her first class – by walking away.

A taste of success

• Tamie Okuyama’s first solo exhibition, which included her painting “The Day I Became a Dog” took place in 1978 at a rental gallery in Tokyo where it drew much media attention. The economy was depressed so there was a dearth of exhibitions at the time. Much to her surprise, it was a near-sellout. Perhaps the combination of the quality and appeal of her paintings with the virtual absence of competition contributed to this unexpected success. It may have been this experience that gave her not only a greater confidence but the courage to explore more deeply what was growing increasingly important to her: The oneness of humankind and nature. Ms. Okuyama half-jokes that 50 years in the future, she would be pleased to be described in this way: “Tamie Okuyama, a painter who chose to live in the question, ‘What is human?’ lived that way throughout her life.”

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Teaching as an Extension of the Artist

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• It came as a surprise when Tamie Okuyama was approached by Onomishi University in Hiroshima with an unorthodox proposition: they wanted to establish a graduate school, and faculty members were required to pass a government examination to qualify. “Go through the process, we’ll make you a graduate professor and chair of the oil painting curriculum.” She couldn’t believe they were serious. “Not only have I never had any formal education in oil painting and my techniques are completely self-taught,” Okuyama explained, “but I didn’t believe art was meant to BE taught. The ideal is simply to create your own work from your own point of view.”

• The university officials persisted. “You can paint, of course. The students will learn from seeing you hard at work so you can work on your paintings in your laboratory. After two years, you can choose to stay or leave.” Her pragmatic decision was influenced by her aging, beloved Labrador retriever. The university’s offer would enable her and the dog to live in a beautiful rural setting, ringed by mountains and ocean. She accepted the offer on the condition that her dog be allowed in her laboratory and describes the experience as less being a professor than a “willful painter.” She spent seven years there, far away from her Tokyo home.

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• The students and the professor ended up teaching each other. While Tamie watched them struggle to transfer imagination to canvas, they learned from her rather unorthodox view of how one creates art. “Many of my students didn’t realize their own potential, but I saw ‘potential’ that could have turned into “talent” in all of them. True talent must be the ability to realize your own potential, something I struggled with very early in my career as an artist.” She continued, “I tried to teach them not to be confused by the values and sensibilities of others, even teachers.”

Today: Coming full circle

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• Tamie Okuyama lives and paints in her home in Tokyo, built from a design she created herself. It has two studios – a Japanese room for Japanese-style paintings called nihonga, and a separate wood-floored studio for oil painting. She grows vegetables in her small garden but her favorite place is a rooftop accessible from the studio where she has an unobstructed view of the sun, the painting of which she considers her life’s work. Most recently her work has been exhibited in Los Angeles and Taipei under the auspices of Mizoe Gallery in Tokyo and Fukuoka, Japan. She emphasizes that for her, painting is much like writing in a diary. The process is organic, not planned, and conception takes place when she picks up the brush and images begin to unfold from inside her imagination.

• For fun she plays the shinobue, which she describes as a bamboo flute, which she carries with her on her forays to the beach and the mountains. She attributes her success and recognition as an artist in part to skill but also to “unexpected pieces of good luck.”

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