Fine Art

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SLO

painting

Kaya started painting under the mentorship of Noriaki Sangawa, a Japanese artist who is a member of the internationally recognised art group Ryu, founded by Tosihiro Hamano.

She mostly paints in the style of classical realism and prefers to work from life whenever possible as it is the sole way that enables judging subtle shifts in light and colour. Each composition is carefully planned. After the rough sketch is transferred to the canvas, her painting method is mostly direct, with some glazing in the finishing stages. Studying the techniques of old and new masters, Kaya is implementing the knowledge into an evolving personal method.

Kaya's work met with immediate success when her first ever submission to an international painting competition (Utazu Art Award 2016, Japan) was not only accepted for the group exhibition that featured artists from all over the world, but was also featured on the cover of the catalogue. The painting was subsequently also used as the representative image of a group exhibition of Slovenian artists in Japan. In 2017, she had first solo show, in the National and university library in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She regularly participates in group shows with Leyden gallery, London, UK, her work being displayed alongside well-known names such as Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Paula Rego, Nan Goldin and Leonor Fini. Her work is held in private collections in the UK, France, Japan, Slovenia and The Netherlands.

"With a background in film-making, Kaya Tokuhisa’s ‘dramatic’ still life oil paintings offer a re-interpretation of the traditional still life genre, which is unusually conceptual. Lighting is used to create the appropriate mood of a particular situation, just as it would on a film set or stage, and her objects take on an anthropomorphic significance as human characters."

-Adriana Černe
art historian, curator at Leyden gallery and lecturer at The Royal College of Art

collect

A list of available paintings and their prices can be found here - prints (giclée) available as well. Enquiries about commissions are welcome.

exhibitions