Yasuyo Fujibe’s Portraits Merge Islamic and Japanese Art

Yasuyo Fujibe's softspoken, decorative works immediately caught our eye at LA Art Show last week. Her pieces there represented a departure from her older monochromatic paintings of faces in favor of new bolder elements. This would be her unique portrayal of doe-eyed girls in the arabesque style of Islamic art. Her use of surface decorations are based on the linear patterns of foliage and snowflakes, tiled repeatedly in a lace-like manner. Quiet yet intense, girls stare dreamily through their veils of interwoven lines.

Yasuyo Fujibe’s softspoken, decorative works immediately caught our eye at LA Art Show last week. Her pieces there represented a departure from her older monochromatic paintings of faces in favor of new bolder elements. This would be her unique portrayal of doe-eyed girls in the arabesque style of Islamic art. Her use of surface decorations are based on the linear patterns of foliage and snowflakes, tiled repeatedly in a lace-like manner. Quiet yet intense, girls stare dreamily through their veils of interwoven lines. They resemble a wedding veil, symbolically worn by Japanese brides to conceal jealousy, ego, selfishness and other undesirable attributes from their grooms. While protecting the anonymity of her subjects, Fujibe’s layered images separate soul from the exterior beauty taken at face value.

Topics

Arabesque, Islamic Art, Japanese art, Portraiture, Yasuyo Fujibe

painting, Portraiture, Realism, Sharon Sprung

August 12, 2014

Setting soft and supple nudes against graphic patterns and textures, Brooklyn-based painter Sharon Sprung utilizes the tension between abstraction and realism to appease her own inner dichotomies and create art that expresses emotional complexities. But unlike many artists who muddle the polarities of figuration and abstraction into ambiguity, Sprung leaves them distinct, engendering a contrast that intensifies the impact of each.

Behind Oresegun Olumide’s Hyperrealistic Portraits

hyperrealism, Oresegun Olumide, Portraiture

March 12, 2016

Nigerian artist Oresegun Olumide goes beyond realism with his meticulously detailed oil paintings that could easily be mistaken for photographs. Notoriously difficult to capture in fine art, water plays a central role in his portraits: each figure is unclothed, allowing Olumide to explore the distinct texture and aesthetic quality of water-on-skin.

Tomas Clayton Mixes Various Time Periods in his Stylized Portraits

painting, Portraiture, Thomas Clayton

April 9, 2015

Tomas Clayton takes us back 100 years with his nostalgic portraits set in the World War I era. Re-imagining documentary photographs and artifacts from this time period, Clayton creates enigmatic, highly stylized images that zero in on various characters — soldiers, acrobats, actors, and average men and women alike. Influenced by the aesthetics of the 1970s, elements of this period get muddled with his early 20th century imagery, as well. As a result, his oil on masonite works at times become dislodged from a specific time and place, inviting viewers to create narratives of their own.

Studio Visit: Stephanie Inagaki Shares Her Ghostly Charcoal Drawings

Collage, Japanese art, Stephanie Inagaki

January 29, 2016

Japanese artist Stephanie Inagaki's black and white charcoal drawings depict female figures that are not only an embodiment of her roots, but also of herself as an artist and a woman. For the past couple of years, she has been incorporating the Japanese ghost folklore and mythology of her culture into what she describes as "pillars of inspiration"; tall, bold, creative women, often self-portraits, that represent the well rounded woman Inagaki aspires to be. Previously featured on our blog, she likens the figures in her drawings to the Creation and Destruction goddesses like Kali from India or Izanami from Japan, and there is generally an underlying theme of life and death throughout. Inagaki invited Hi-Fructose into her new studio in Los Angeles to give us a preview and tell us more about the direction of where her work is going.

Yasuyo Fujibe’s Portraits Merge Islamic and Japanese Art

Sharon Sprung’s Portraits of Contemplative Women

Behind Oresegun Olumide’s Hyperrealistic Portraits

Tomas Clayton Mixes Various Time Periods in his Stylized Portraits

Studio Visit: Stephanie Inagaki Shares Her Ghostly Charcoal Drawings

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List

Follow us on our social networks

Shop

Subscribe

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List