New Paintings by Kanna Aoki

Kanna Aoki was born in Tokyo and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She currently paints in a converted warehouse in Berkeley, California. Aoki finds inspiration in the shapes, colors and locations of her everyday surroundings: her paintings attempt to locate beauty in the mundane.

Aoki’s rural and urban landscapes juxtapose remnants of the past and ironies of the present, creating a framework for her explorations of solitude, light and grace. Kanna is intrigued both by the ways people interact with each other and by the ways that they detach from one another. Human figures in her work are often ambiguous and remote —set in a moment in time — leaving their thoughts and emotions open to interpretation. 

Employing an intuitive sense of composition, a love of color and an engagement with the physical properties of paint, Aoki generates moods of quiet energy that balance subtle tensions.