Artists on Mitchell: Naomi Kawanishi Reis

Naomi Kawanishi Reis stands in front of two large oval abstracted botanical paintings. She is a Japanese-American woman, wearing a black dress, and black boos, with mid length dark hair. — Naomi Kawanishi Reis in her studio in Brooklyn, NY. Photo by Meredith Jenks Photography.

Growing up in Ithaca, NY, and then Kyoto, Japan, I wasn’t exposed much to western painting beyond the Van Goghs in textbooks. Joan Mitchell’s work seeped into my consciousness bit by bit. I would have first come across it in the early 2000s, many years after moving to New York, but it’s only now in mid-life that I can really start to see her work—in person, whenever possible—and fully take it in, the power and confidence of it, with my full attention, artist to artist.

I have a funny relationship with painting, where some deep part of me feels I don’t “get” to do it; the DNA of my craftspeople background whispers that painting is for a different class of people. So I have a tendency to hold painting—art for art’s sake—at arm’s length. Receiving the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant was life changing, to feel that the narrative I had internalized was not in fact set in stone. The grant began a direct connection to Joan Mitchell the person, not just this distanced Painter who occupied hallowed ground. I picture her sometimes, cigarette in hand, in the corner of my studio, telling me to get on with it and just make the work.

Mon Paysage is a vertical abstract painting by Joan Mitchell with overlapping rounded blue and green shapes accented with gestures of red, orange, and green lines on a white ground. — Joan Mitchell, *Mon Paysage*, 1967. Oil on canvas, 102 3/8 x 70 7/8 inches (260 x 180 cm). Collection of Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul, France. © Estate of Joan Mitchell.

Joan Mitchell was unapologetic about painting. I admire her directness, that she didn't ask for permission. Across time, I feel her saying, make the thing, get out in front of doubt, channel direct from that pure space of making without filter. She’s a great mentor. I want to follow her lead into that space of no apology.

I love knowing that Mitchell would paint late into the night, studio windows covered in canvas. Whatever happened in that studio was just pure in-the-moment painting, no self, no ego. When I’m able to shed those layers of self consciousness and doubt, I feel I am in good company with all artists past and present who go there. That space of flow is eternal and universal.

Naomi Kawanishi Reis, *111119 (90˚E)*, 2021. Acrylic wash on hand-cut washi and mylar on cotton paper, 47 7/8 x 36 3/4 inches. Photograph by Paul Takeuchi.

I’ve developed a method of mark making that is one step removed from direct painting, using cut and collaged prints, painted washi, and color pencils. The gesture is much slower than a Joan Mitchell swish, but I like thinking that I can channel some of her spirit and the joy she obviously felt creating those storms of color. Thanks to her vision of supporting future generations of artists after her passing, the ripples of her influence and vision continue on.

Naomi Kawanishi Reis is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY, and a 2018 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation’s Painters & Sculptors Grant.