Norman Takeuchi WHAT Paintings and Drawings, acrylics, pastels, charcoal WHERE - Home studio, Ashton, 257-2347 - Keffer Gallery, 128 Queen St., Almonte, 256-2676 - Ottawa Art Gallery, 2 Daly Ave., Ottawa, 233-8865 - Galerie d'art Jean-Claude-Bergeron, Ottawa, 562-7836 - Gallery Telpaz, Manotick, 692-6666 WHY "Painting is my work; everything else is chores." See samples of Norman's work	Previous Artist Trading Cards

Norman Takeuchi - Abstract by Design
By Sally Hansen

NormanTakeuchi is fully devoted to his art. "Painting is my work; everything else is chores," he tells me as I ask to see more and more of his wonderful paintings and drawings at his spacious home studio in Ashton. He works mostly in series, and his work pays off. He has appeared in sixteen exhibitions since 1998, with the most recent at the Japanese Embassy in Ottawa, and at the Phillip K. Wood Gallery before that in September '03. He is represented in the permanent collection of the Canada Council. A year ago theHumm had the honour of presenting him the Award of Merit at Art Nuvo's February Art Exhibition and Silent Auction.

In 2002 Takeuchi exhibited his series of Kimono Alterations at the Sans Souci Gallery in Merrickville. A stunning display of Japanese kimonos at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in 1995 triggered his interest in this icon of his ethnic heritage. It has become one of the major themes in his work. This beautiful series of pastels and acrylics illustrates a continuum from clearly defined kimono shapes incorporating organic images into progressively looser, more abstract invented forms.
In another lovely series, he turned to nature for inspiration. At that time he wrote: "Plants in particular, whether dead or alive, provide the starting point from which to improvise and invent. As well, my works attempt to explore the idea of creating new relationships between the natural and the imaginary worlds by combining recognizable images and invented forms." In these works the abstraction is subtler, layered, sometimes only a distortion of perspective.

Altering Perception
What draws an accomplished representational artist to pursue an artistic language of pure abstraction? The deeper I delved into his prodigious collection of paintings and drawings, the more curious I became about Norman Takeuchi's very conscious progression from the recognizable image to the more evocative abstract imagery of his most recent works.
"It's part of being an artist," he responded. "You have to keep pushing, growing, being inventive. In my newest pieces, the recognizable images have disappeared. Maybe the events of 9/11 triggered it. I think I can say what I want to say with these new images I'm inventing." At the same time, he still hones his drawing skills at Life Drawing sessions at the Nepean Visual Arts Centre. There are many ways of saying things, and his repertoire is vast.

Abstract By Design
Takeuchi was born in Vancouver and completed a four-year course in painting and design at the Vancouver School of Art. As the result of receiving a Leon and Thea Koerner Foundation scholarship, he spent a year painting in London, England. On his return to Canada, he was selected as a designer for the Canadian Government's pavilion at Expo '67 in Montreal. After another year of painting in England on a Canada Council scholarship, he returned to Ottawa and worked as a designer for the Canadian pavilion at Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan.

In 1970 Norman embarked on a 25-year career as a designer for the Canadian Museum of Nature. "It was the best decision I ever made; it was a marriage of my love for design and my love of nature. Scientists are like artists - very focused, and dedicated. I made a lot of friends." But a major health alarm convinced him to curtail his after-work tendencies to pursue his art into the wee hours, and only since his retirement in 1996 has he worked as a full-time artist.

Today he is consciously on guard to keep his extensive and successful design background from creeping into his art. "I want my art to be pure - completely free of design decoration and functional purpose. Design has to sell; it has to be useful; it has to cater to people's needs. An artist can be completely self-absorbed. I can concentrate on what I want to say."

In the Eye of the Beholder
As a viewer, I have always found profoundly abstract art the most intellectually challenging. Perhaps I have been barking up the wrong tree. In The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, spring, 1951, American Abstract Expressionist painter Robert Motherwell wrote: "Nothing as drastic an innovation as abstract art could have come into existence, save as the consequence of a most profound, relentless, unquenchable need. The need is for felt experience - intense, immediate, direct, subtle, unified, warm, vivid, rhythmic."

In looking at Takeuchi's more abstract paintings and drawings, I realize that I have to feel them, not analyse them. It is precisely because they do not evoke any of my own personal baggage, attached to place or object, that they have the power to impact and inform me. My unconscious is summoned to provide the links between our felt experiences.

Indulge your conscious and unconscious aesthetic sensibilities as you observe his progression to purer abstraction. You can contact Norman at his home studio in Ashton by phone at 257-2347. He also has works at Keffer Gallery, 128 Queen St., Almonte, 256-2676, Ottawa Art Gallery, 2 Daly Ave., Ottawa, 233-8865, Galerie d'art Jean-Claude-Bergeron, Ottawa, 562-7836, and Gallery Telpaz in Manotick, 692-6666.