Category: Tom Nakashima

“Hugo at Birth” 1995

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Oil on canvas, 14” x 12”. Collection of Hugo Nakashima Brown, Austin, TX.  Hugo was my 1st grandchild.  I have always thought that children are most interesting at birth.   They still carry echos of their past life.  This was taken just minutes after Hugo was born and he looks more like a grouchy old […]

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Series: “Memories of Childhood” 1994

.Reading time 1 minute.

From left to right, top to bottom: 1. “Eyes”, 2. “On Being – an Indian”, 3. “Sick Salmon on Snake River” 4. “Horse and Square”, 5. Berry Pies in Canada”, 6. “Grandpa’s Samurai Sword”, 7. “The Boy Who Drowned”, 8. “Crazy Man”, 9. “Trinity Mystery”, 10. “Ringworm Day”.  Oil on Canvas, each 16″ x 16″.  […]

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“Martyr & Cage” (dyptich) 2019

.Reading time 2 minutes.

I 1st used the chicken cage image as a metaphor for Minidoka and other internment (concentration) camps.  There was this bullshit excuse that my relatives were interned to “protect” them from the anger of other Americans.  It’s like saying we put chickens in cages to protect them from the fox. I think of the figure […]

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“BARRIER AGAINST THE WIND” (Verso) 2019

.Reading time 1 minute.

This image (the verso side of Barrier Against the Wind) is scratched into wet paint to present Ted Nakashima’s article for The New Republic in 1942. At the time Ted and Mako (his wife) were in temporary internment at Camp Harmony, awaiting transfer to Minidoka Internment Camp in Idaho.  Perhaps because of this writing Ted […]

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“Barrier Against The Wind” (frontice) 2019

.Reading time 4 minutes.

This painting is done in a modified technique I developed to mimic the traditional Japanese byobu (folding screen). While the hinging and panels are more or less traditional it is painted with oil and gilded leaf on panels. The left panel displays a figure of a martyr in a cart I drew from a German […]

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