Mist Over Field

This work is one of several dozen paintings Araki created for a gallery exhibition in Santa Fe, New Mexico late in his life. These late works are dramatically different from Araki’s earlier work inspired by his mentor Zhang Daqian. Unlike his earlier focus on Zhang and Chinese painting (examples of which are displayed throughout this exhibition), in his final works he made use of thickly applied mineral and metallic pigments in combination with modulated washes of ink and light color—a trademark of the modern Japanese traditionalist painting movement known as Nihonga (literally, “Japanese painting”).