Drue Kataoka (Akio's Pick)

Drue Kataoka is an American sumi-e artist of a Japanese descent. The artist was trained in the traditional sumi-e format, which is heavily influenced by Zen Buddhism, and depicts what she calls "Now-ness", the subject matters around her that she is intrigued with at the moment each painting is created.  Those subject matters include the following: Silicon Valley, where the artist resides, portraits, amd her experiences at Stanford Univ. 

In her latest projcect "Around the World in a Single Stroke", Kataoka takes her painting of one encircled brush stroke which represents an infinite possibility in one continuous journey around the world, where she joins 12 distinguished honorees from different areas of field. 

Kataoka could be related to some of the previous artists such as Sol Lewitt and Hiroshi Sugimoto as well as many other Sumi-e painters  in a sense that the beauty of their artwork lies in their simplicity, depicting the essence of the subject matter with only necessary amount of details. 

As I could not upload pictures, check out her website for the images of her work and more information.

http://www.drue.net

I've also attached here the URL for her YouTube video.

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=YjXL518NUis