images courtesy Tobin Ohashi Gallery | click to enlarge

Boston-based Japanese artist Masako Kamiya creates colorful paintings that are rich in texture by building up dots of color into half-inch, stalactite-like columns. She primarily works with gouache, which is a type of paint consisting of pigment and a binding agent. She then meticulously applies this to a wood panel, a process of mark-making that she likens to “a conversation” with the paint.

But don’t call it pointillism. “A point is very different from a dot,” she observes. “And my paintings start with dots.” She goes on to say that “from a distance the painting is a series of dots, which create larger patterns toward a uniformed center. When observed more closely the third dimension is revealed, a forest of multicolored columns.”

Kamiya’s work will be part of an upcoming exhibition organized by Tobin Ohashi Gallery.

close-up shot of her work

close-up shot of her work

(thanks Bob!)