Meet Nobee Kanayama

We had the good fortune of connecting with Nobee Kanayama and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Nobee, what’s the end goal, career-wise?
Hopefully someday I would like to tell myself that I finally managed to come up with a painting that disappears in front of my eyes. When we looking at a painting, we start from a distance then closer and closer and enjoy the details. Most of us have a different emotional reactions by staring at it. But in the past from my own experience when I came across the painting which disappears then I realize I’m inside the painting enjoying emotional experience and having a hard time getting out of it. Make the matter worse I go back to the painting time and time again. To make it simple, when I see the old master’s works they disappears, instead of visual experience the emotional experience takes over. Well I still working on it and learning everyday how to make it happen.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
My artwork is all about sensations that makes me inspire to paint. Most of my inspirations comes from texture, colors and shapes through out everyday living. For example, a ordinary coffee cup at a local cafe I found my self fell in love with the shape and colors, just makes me happy. When I feel the sense of a inspiration that is worth more than anything else next to loving someone, I have to paint it. This sensation gives me a boost to wake up in the morning. Hopefully I can translate my inspiration into a paintings for sharing. Took me a long time to understand my own artwork and for now I came to focus on shapes, colors and textures in visualizing my ideas. I enjoying paint what I thought I saw and felt instead of what I saw, that’s why I paint from my memory, painting in more like abstract way I can change shapes, colors and shapes according to my intuition. My wish is that a viewer would joining in my voyage for enjoying inspirations through my paintings.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I’m not much of a social person and don’t know much about places to go to but I do know it’s not much of where you go and what you do or eat, It’s about how you spend the time with your friends and what would you talk about with them.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Of course without help of my family in Japan and family in the States I couldn’t make it this far and at the same time I was so lucky to encounter few good friends and family of my master. Of course I have a few old great masters from past who inspired me so much about painting. Over all it’s the people who I value dearly, without them I couldn’t be happier than now.

Website: www.nobeestudio.com
Instagram: instagram.com/nobeestudio
Twitter: @nobeestudio
Facebook: facebook.com/nobeestudio
Other: nobeekanayama.blogspot.com