Wendy Kawabata

“Wendy Kawabata is an artist who has travelled and lived for periods in diverse and far-flung places and is now based in Hawaii. The landscape, the environment, love, and more than a sparkle of dry wit feature prominently and symbiotically. Her work has a human inquisitiveness that gently nudges at familiar associations, but it is humour, tenderness, and an eye for nature that Kawabata foregrounds against the more weighted themes of gender politics, heritage, history, and environmental sustainability.”
—Carissa Farrell

Kawabata is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and has presented her work in numerous solo and group exhibitions at venues including The Carriageworks, Sydney, Australia; The Corban Estate Arts Centre, Auckland, New Zealand; The Texas State University Art Gallery, San Marcos, TX; The Fed Galleries, Kendall College of Art and Design, Grand Rapids, MI; the Center for Book and Paper Arts, Chicago, IL; and Smith College, Northampton, MA. She has also participated in residencies in Iceland and Michigan.

Kawabata curated the group exhibition Material Slip (UHM Commons Gallery and the University of Wyoming Art Museum). She has received recognition from national and international publications, including Art in America, Modern Painters, The New Yorker, Artweek, Aucklander, and NO Magazine.

Her work is featured in the books 20/20: Twenty Artists, Twenty Writers, One New Zealand Gallery (Sanderson Contemporary, Auckland, NZ), The Artists: 21 Practitioners in New Zealand Contemporary Art (Beatnik Publishing, Auckland, NZ), and PromptPress 1 (PromptPress, Iowa City).

Artist Statement

My studio practice is focused on research into color, light, flatness, and depth in painting. For me, painting is an ongoing dialogue between myself, the materials, and the history of paint. I paint on linen that has been treated with a clear primer. I do this as a means for avoiding the unnatural bright white of gesso, and to bring attention to the linen substrate. It is not just a support, it is an important component of the painting. I want it to be seen in the same way one hopefully notices the exposed linen often seen in paintings created prior to the invention of synthetic gesso. Regardless of medium, I am drawn to work that doesn’t attempt to hide how it was made and shares it structure and components in a humble way.