Today we’d like to introduce you to Hiroshi Sato.
Hiroshi, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I was born in Japan and from the age of three to fourteen, I grew up in Tanzania, East Africa. In that period, my world could be separated into three places. The first was the inside of the house, where it was filled with stories of my parents, books, and movies from the west. The second was the outside world of an alternate culture and landscape. The third was the place I was supposedly from Japan. It was a place that mostly existed as a pseudo-fictional place in my head, it would be confirmed to be real by brief visits to the real place once a year.
Our family returned to Japan during my high school years and it was a period where it flipped the three places around. The pseudo fiction becoming the real and the real world becoming memory. The idea of culture and class as relative to location was cemented as a fundamental aspect of the human condition.
For college I came to the U.S, enrolling in Atlanta College of Art, however at orientation it was announced that the school would be merged with SCAD and it essentially set the tone for the rest of the school year. I didn’t think I wanted to pursue the art field and so I dropped out after the first year and returned to Japan. I worked in Japan for about two years of saving money and went on a backpacking trip around different countries. I ended up in Italy on the trip and seeing all the beautiful sculpture just living on the streets reignited my interest in going back into pursuing art.
I went back to school, this time going to the Academy of Art University San Francisco where I did a BFA and MFA in fine art painting.
I currently live in San Francisco living and working as a fine artist.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
I am a fine art oil painter, primarily working in representational genre. My paintings mostly consist of figure in environment subject matter. I am interested in the ideas of perception where our mind is a self-contained world interfacing with the external world. I am interested in the moments of our life where this idea reveals itself to the perceiver.
I am also interested in drawing influence from the past masters such as Edward Hopper, Richard Diebenkorn, Euan Uglow, Vermeer, Chuck Close and Edgar Degas. I am specifically interested in the geometric design principles of the past masters.
As a representational painter we are painting FROM something, painters paint from life, now we paint from photos or life. I am currently exploring painting from computers. I create computer generated 3D environments (worlds) on the computer and then I paint using that as what I am painting “from”.
In your view, what is the biggest issue artists have to deal with?
The biggest challenge for 2D artists facing today is the fact that the possibilities of the picture plane has been fully explored and we live in a post-art movement world. The 2D artists of today are creating something “new” in a world fully mapped out. Artists have to live facing the fact that the work created today contains an almost inescapable inherent derivative/meta-ness to their work.
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
My work is available at
Marrow Gallery, San Francisco, CA, https://www.marrowgallery.com
Salt Fine Art, Laguna Beach,CA, https://saltfineart.net
Abend Gallery, Denver, CO, https://www.abendgallery.com
Zebra One Gallery, London, UK, https://www.zebraonegallery.com
I guess the best way to support artists is to visit their exhibitions and purchasing their work.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.hiroshisatoart.com
- Email: hiroshisatoart@gmail.com
- Instagram: @hiroshisatoart
- Twitter: @hiroshisatoart
Image Credit:
Hiroshi Sato
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