Connecting the Dots

Black Rain, 20-by-16-inch acrylic gouache on paper, $2,500 (unframed). Photograph courtesy of Gallery Naga.

As a child, Masako Kamiya took great satisfaction in building and refining shapes through a series of repetitive marks. Today, the MassArt grad’s delicate representations of nature and the human experience are conveyed through layers and color in striking three- dimensional gouache paintings.

“I’m not interested in concrete places,” says Kamiya, who progressively applies thousands of dots to paper until they form a pattern with an observable focal point. “I’m interested in weather…feelings, the atmosphere.” To create Black Rain, for example, Kamiya took inspiration from the temperamental climate of Ireland’s west coast, where she spent a month in 2013.

Kamiya says her intricate, time-consuming artistic process allows her to better connect with her surroundings, something she hopes is evident in her work. “It’s not so much about rain or the title,” she says. “I want the viewer to experience it physically.”