Masako Kamiya

Masako Kamiya has developed a unique approach to painting that is hers alone. Blurring the line between painting and sculpture, she constructs tiny towers of gouache, an opaque watercolor, one dot at a time on a panel or a piece of paper. When one daub of paint dries, she adds on top of it another dot. When the painting is finished, she will have repeated this process some 10,000 times. Her paintings are stunningly complex, and their minuscule transitions of color are hypnotic, especially on close inspection.

In her paintings on paper, Kamiya has experimented with both the topography and color relationships of her paintings. Her mark making has shifted from dense coverage of the overall surface of a background, which she’s favored for years, to more lacy and airy compositions. Inspired by a three-and-a-half week stay in the darkest place in Ireland in 2016, Kamiya also began to work on darker backgrounds of grey toned paper.

Masako Kamiya’s meticulous accumulations of innumerable dots of paint have attracted much attention in the Boston art scene. The tiny, prismatic stalagmites of paint that spike forward in her works beckon viewers with mesmerizing cascades of visual information.

Born and raised in Japan, Kamiya pursued her art training in the United States at the Massachusetts College of Art and the Montserrat College of Art, where she is now a Professor.

“My recent paintings are more playful and joyful as they unfurl the prismatic spectacle and reflect the pursuit of wonder, curiosity, and marvel within the pictorial confines. Painting is increasingly a redemptive process, as I gather paint marks to recover a new perceptual balance, as I compensate for the loss of my physical balance. I am in the process of discovering the endless play of forms and colors and the feeling of exuberance.” - Masako Kamiya