Audrey Kawasaki

I've had a bit of an addiction recently to Japanese themed art, I've previously blogged about Victo Ngai and now am going to shout a little about the wonders of Audrey Kawasaki.

I first became aware of Audrey's work about 3 or 4 years ago, I've always appreciated the genre that Japanese greats such as Hokusai, Kuniyoshi and Hiroshige embody. The more contemporary 'names' like Ngai and Shimizu (who I repped for a while) also have an exceptional draw to me but Audrey's work had a certain magic and charm to it that I'd not seen before.

Audrey Kawaski is a Japanese-American artist whose influences are strongly taken from Manga and Art Nouveau. If you are familiar with my blog you will know from previous posts I'm a bit of a fan of Art Nouveau, which might explain why Audrey's style was so attractive to me. Generally her work depicts beautiful young girls who have the look of innocence about them, but with an erotic edge. Audrey's website goes on to describe her work as 'The figures she paints are seductive and contain an air of melancholy. They exist in their own sensually esoteric realm, yet at the same time present a sense of accessibility that draws the observer to them.'

Audrey's work tends to sell like hot cakes, you can purchase limited edition prints through her website and I was lucky enough (in the two minutes they were sold) to hit the 'buy' button in time. I was assuming, from chatter on the web, that her work does sell out tremendously quickly but wasn’t prepared for all 300 to go in 2 minutes flat! The examples of her work featured below are typical of her style, her canvas of choice being wood panels. The print I now have hanging in my flat is 'She Entwined' which is the image on the right.

You can see more of Audrey’s work at http://www.audrey-kawasaki.com