Frank Okada

Frank Okada (1931 - 2000) was an American Abstract Expressionist painter, mainly active in the Pacific Northwest. His mature style often featured brightly colored, off-kilter geometric shapes done in large format, including round canvasses; subtly elaborate brushwork suggested the influence of both traditional Asian art and the "mystics" of the Northwest School. His later work at times used symbolic shapes which more directly evoked his Nisei heritage and the years he spent in detention camps with his family during World War II.

He taught art at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon from 1969 to 1999.

Frank Sumio Okada was born in Seattle, Washington in 1931. His parents, immigrants from the Hiroshima area in Japan, managed residence hotels in the International District near downtown Seattle. He was the youngest of four brothers, and had two younger sisters. In 1942, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Okada and his family spent two years in detention at Camp Harmony and the Minidoka Relocation Center, and another year in Ione, Washington (outside the Japanese exclusion zone), where his father worked in a laundry. His brothers Charlie and John served in the US Army. Charlie Okada was in the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team, along with an older foster brother who was killed in action in Italy.John Okada later authored the acclaimed novel No-No Boy.

Returning to Seattle after the war, Frank Okada attended Garfield High School and began taking painting lessons on Saturdays at the Leon Derbyshire School of Fine Art. He also began a lifelong infatuation with jazz music, haunting the record stores and live venues of Seattle's Jackson Street, which was two blocks from the Pacific Hotel, where he lived with his family. Among his schoolmates were future jazz legends Quincy Jones and Buddy Catlett. After graduating from high school he studied commercial art at Edison Technical School, then went to Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.

...
Wikipedia