Footsteps

Okada was an accomplished artist and teacher in the Western figurative tradition when, in 1950, he left his homeland and immigrated to New York. Within three years, according to Gordon Washburn, he had transformed his “European landscapes and…pale French girls” into lyrical abstractions, and had developed a new style representative of a “hybrid flower, a creation whose materials and format are Western and whose inspiration is Eastern.” Living in the West gave him the freedom to explore and express his feelings about Japan. As Okada recollected, “When I lived in Japan, I thought only of the West, and now that I am here I dream only of Japan.” His dreams became the inspiration for his abstract paintings, and Footsteps, painted in 1954, represents one of Okada’s early forays into this new realm of expression.

Okada revealed his Asian heritage through the calm simplicity of the composition, the soft, muted palette, and the subtle allusions to nature. By balancing void against condensed weight, he realized the oriental pictorial tradition of implying vast and ambiguous space. He balanced this by keeping with the concerns of his fellow Abstract Expressionists in America, drawing on imagery from his subconscious, allowing it to dictate his creative hand. He held no preconceived imagery for a picture, but preferred “doing without knowing,” in the spirit of Zen Buddhism, which emphasizes meditation.

In Footsteps, Okada’s ambiguous scattered shapes could suggest pebbles, rocks and stocks, and the geometric clusters suggest houses. Okada’s art had a tendency to suggest landscape, as well as the presence of man, balancing human and earth elements. Okada achieved texture in Footsteps by scraping back paint, painting wet-into-wet, splattering paint onto a dry surface, and using a dry brush. He also rotated the canvas as he worked, as evidenced by drips of paint running in different directions. The composition is built up with thin oil washes and the canvas is covered with thin scumbles and glazes.

Duncan and Marjorie Phillips first selected works by Okada for their collection in 1954. After seeing Footsteps at the Corcoran, Phillips was “very much tempted by the beautiful white [Okada],” but chose to wait before pursuing it. Footsteps was again exhibited at the Corcoran in fall 1955, on which occasion Okada visited Washington. Phillips purchased it a year later. He frequently hung it with works by Bradley Walker Tomlin and Mark Rothko in the conviction that Okada shared similar poetic impulses with them.