Skip to main content

Bright Colors and Lush Florals


Ever walked into a gallery or scrolled through your Instagram feed and instantly recognized a painting without even reading the description? One artist who exemplifies this is Naomi Okubo.

Born in Tokyo, Okubo collects images from various sources like books and magazines, scans the images, then project them onto a canvas and traces their outline. From there, she hand-paints each image.

Her art explores themes such as belonging and societal pressures, and the pattern-filled paintings are full of girls who conceal their faces with their hair.

Okubo earned her MFA from Musashino Art University and lived in New York for two years. She has exhibited widely in Asia, Europe, and the United States, and her work has been featured by Airbnb Magazine, Financial Times, Juxtapoz, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

When chocolate meets art

I heard it's National Chocolate Day, so I thought I'd share this video about Orlando's newest and sweetest attraction.

Italy's True Movie Poster King

What you see here is the hand-crafted magic of Renato Casaro, the late Italian designer who practically defined an era of cinematic cool. His work wasn't just advertising; it was art. Casaro's journey into becoming one of the most recognizable poster artists wasn't by chance; it was a pure obsession. As a kid, he was fascinated by billboards, trying to mimic the styles of Norman Rockwell and Angelo Cesselon. Think of a teen so determined that he was drawing right onto the walls of a local cinema just to snag a few free tickets. Casaro created posters for a lot of Spaghetti Westerns. His big break came with A Fistful of Dollars in 1964. The movie starred Clint Eastwood and was directed by Sergio Leone. The poster didn’t just promote the film; it helped make it a global hit. Naturally, Leone came calling again, commissioning posters for My Name Is Nobody (1973) and the epic crime saga, Once Upon a Time in America (1984). A Casaro poster is easy to spot because of his uniqu...

The Three-Step Secret

Have you ever encountered a painting that, up close, is pure chaos—a riot of color, a tantrum of brushstrokes? Yet, take a few steps back, and suddenly, the mess organizes itself. As if by cruel magic or divine intervention, the disarray snaps into clarity. That is the experience of viewing the art of Montana Engels . Her work is a testament to this phenomenon. Up close, Montana's canvases appear as nothing more than abstract, hand-painted stripes. Then you move away. Instantly, the mess resolves into a stunning, realistic portrait. The technique is extraordinary, turning proximity into confusion and distance into focus. Montana wasn’t always a phenomenon. Her creativity was just a hobby. Then came Belgium’s Got Talent . Suddenly, she was noticed. Now, she's everywhere. If you have a Facebook account, you might want to follow her .