Frank Okada

Art Brokerage: Frank Okada American Artist: b. 1931-2000. Frank Okada was an American Abstract Expressionist painter, mainly active in the Pacific Northwest. His mature style often featured brightly colored, off-kilter geometric shapes done in large format, including round canvasses; subtly elaborate brushwork suggested the influence of both traditional Asian art and the "mystics" of the Northwest School. His later work at times used symbolic shapes which more directly evoked his Nisei heritage and the years he spent in detention camps with his family during World War II. Okada was drafted in the United States Army for just under two years, including several months at an evacuation hospital in South Korea during the Korean War near the Pusan area. He was a medic. After serving in the army, he attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1957.While at Cranbrook he began visiting New York City, where he met many of the leading lights of Abstract Expressionism, whose inspiration began to show in his own work. After winning a Whitney Fellowship in 1957 he spent about a year in New York, studying and exhibiting. Evenings were often spent at the Cedar Tavern, interacting with the members of the city's burgeoning modern art scene. Okada's work received considerable attention. He was associated with the Brata Gallery, where he showed regularly, and was profiled in a 'new talent' issue of Art in America magazine. However, he found it difficult to develop his style amid the excitement of New York, and was disappointed by how quickly commercial interests and new hierarchies took root as the city became the world's new focus of modern art. In 1958 he returned to Seattle Listings wanted.