Risa Sekiguchi is a Japanese-born American artist, active since the 1980s and based in Chicago and Kyoto. Her intimately-scaled figurative paintings — some as small as a few inches square — are imbued with sense of quiet restlessness. Objects glow and flicker, appear and recede, set against backdrops of moody shadows and ambiguous spaces. Working primarily in oil on copper, Risa uses age-old European techniques such as glazing and often employs chiaroscuro. Yet, her work reveals her Japanese roots, seen in flattened spaces and the lack of perspective, and an ample use of pattern and geometry. Her themes of loneliness, loss and yearning have stayed throughout her life.
Risa circa 1983 during a trek to remote regions of Zanskar, India