Musical Abstractions in Paint

To say that the paintings of Kunimi Terada remind one of music is to explain some of their sensual appeal, but also describes their lyricism. Working in a completely free and abstract mode, Ms. Terada creates harmonious orchestrations of shapes and colors that seem to come together as unconsciously and as naturally as clouds, but which have a kind of order, almost austere, that is like musical composition.

The language of pictorial creation has a more open-ended structure than music; still, there are laws that govern the harmony of the picture plane. We deal in verticals, horizontals, diagonals, divisions into halves, thirds, quarters; there is the general harmony of color, the balance of warm and cool. Kunimi Terada�s canvases, varying in size from 12 X 12 inches to formats up to 48 X 48 inches, respect these eternal elements while subtly subverting them into new patterns that seem at first to disobey formal laws entirely, gradually arriving in the mind as fresh and new-minted constellations of visual music.

A color which appears to be a warm gray is permeated with echoes of blue breaking through from beneath like the sky behind a cloud; a turquoise mysteriously metamorphoses into a muted yellow, juxtaposed with a wedge of deep red beneath a horizon surmounted with purples, ochers, blues, violets and smoky, transparent glazes of gray over azure and crimson. Between all these drifting islands of color, black charcoal lines demarcate boundaries that dissolve as soon as they are set down. Nothing is fixed, nothing is permanent, and everything is in dialogue, capable of shifting and re-forming into new and equally arbitrary patterns. The colloquy of all these shapes and colors forms a polyphony that brings a sense of joy and play, as well as an ethereal and otherworldly calm.

The source of all these spontaneous eruptions of shape and color seem to be a deep intuitive imagination informed by a conscious enthusiasm for the work of certain abstract painters of the fifties and sixties, including Richard Diebenkorn, Lee Krasner, Graham Sutherland and the pervading influence of Matisse, whose sensibility also made a deep impress on Ms. Terada. She also admits to the influence of the work of her father, the eminent, Japanese painter Takeo Terada, who during the thirties lived in the United States for a time, imbibing the influences of European modernism, wedding them to a figurative style that evinced a deeply abstract quality.

But there is no overt resemblance between her work and the various masters whose work she enjoys. Rather, she draws upon a feeling for abstract imagery that is entirely personal, resulting in images that are always a law unto themselves; there is no clear methodology or system employed here. The language of abstract pictorialism seems second nature to her, and each canvas that gradually give birth to a strange yet beautiful harmony of disparate ingredients.

Colors are laid on in a flat manner, but the scumblings and transparent glazes, which overlay them, result in tonalities that evade definition. The richness and subtlety of her palette produces surprising combinations that are never discordant, despite the unexpected clash of intense colors amid the more muted pastel tones. Shapes of an irrational character take their place together, forming a balance that is asymmetrical yet inevitable. The often square format in which Ms. Terada likes to work seems exploded, breaking up into a more organic pattern. There are no rigid shapes or straight lines to be found here, only bending, swaying, sweeping contours that are as natural as the flow of water, yet architectonic at the same time.

Finally it is her design which makes these canvases, so unpredictable in their effect, cohere in a way that seems wholly natural and right, but the secret that animates each image and makes it speak eloquently remains private and personal, part of an expressive gift that finds beauty in forms, shapes and colors that are surprising and fresh, but which achieve that much-desired goal in art, and intimacy that is also universal.

Charles Coffman
2004

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Native of Japan, moved to United States September, 1964.
Graduated from Musashino Art University, Tokyo, Japan

Group and Solo Exhibitions

2005 LELA(Lantern of the East) Art Exhibition, Pyong Taek, Korea
2005 Nagasaki No. 27th Peace Show
2005 "Asto Museum", Los Angeles, CA
2005 "Museo del Historico", "Museo del Puerto", "The Galleria Angel"
Ensenada, Mexico
2005 14th Lantern of the East International Art Festival,Thailand
2004 2nd Annual LELA (Lantern of the East in Los Angeles) Art Exhibition, Modern Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2004 International Peace Exhibition, Nagasaki Museum, Nagasaki, Japan
2004 LELA Art Exhibition, Pyong Taek, Korea
2003 LELA Inaugural Show, Modern Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2003 "Seeing Red", Group Show, Angels Gate, San Pedro, CA
2002 Group Show, Aries Gallery, Burbank, CA
1997 Brewery Art Walk, Downtown, Los Angeles CA
1996 "Five Man Show", L.A. County Museum Rental and Sales Gallery
Los Angeles, CA
1995 "Art Walk and Talk", The Beys Garden, Santa Monica CA
1994  present: L.A. County Museum Rental and Sales Gallery, CA
1994 "6th Street Show", Santa Monica, CA

Contact:
www.kunimiterada.com

kunimit@gmail.com
kunimit@duckstudios.com

2615 6th Street Unit K
Santa Monica, CA 90405