Paul Horiuchi

Under Iketani, a locally prominent artist, Horiuchi studied traditional sumi-e (or ink wash) technique, and won second prize in a nationwide landscape painting competition.

[1] Daisaku was working for the Union Pacific Railroad as a maintenance foreman in nearby Kanda, Wyoming, and it was there that Chikamasa met his seven- and eight-year-old American-born sisters and three-year-old brother for the first time.

[7] When Horiuchi had been in the U.S. for about a year, his 45-year-old father died of stomach cancer and his mother returned to Japan with the three younger children shortly afterwards.

In 1929, the brothers opened a radio sales and repair shop, but it was soon lost in the Great Depression, and they returned to work on the railroad.

Horiuchi painted in his free time, mostly doing landscapes in the Sumi-e style, but experimenting with more modern American and European approaches as well.

[9] During trips to Seattle to visit his cousin Shigetoshi, he met and befriended the painters Kenjiro Nomura and Kamekichi Tokita, who were important influences.

He also became friends with Tamotsu Takizaki, a zen master and Kendo instructor who would play an important role in shaping his career.

On moving back to Rock Springs with her new husband, Bernadette was shocked by life in Union Pacific company housing, which had neither electricity or indoor plumbing, but soon adapted.

[1] Although conditions were rough in Wyoming, Horiuchi was making good money, was able to purchase a new car, made regular trips to visit friends and family in Seattle, and continued to develop his painting skills, often using his wife and children as subject matter.

They lived far enough inland that they were not subject to forced relocation, but all Japanese were immediately fired by Union Pacific and evicted from company housing.

At one point, the family applied for placement in a relocation camp (a not uncommon occurrence for desperate Japanese-Americans seeking shelter and food), but were denied.

With the war over, Horiuchi and his family moved to Seattle, where he opened Paul's Body and Fender Shop in the city's bustling International District.

In 1947 he won first prize in oil painting at the Western Washington Fair, which at that time was a well-respected exhibition juried by major figures from the West Coast art world, and in 1948 his painting Boat House was shown in the Seattle Art Museum's 34th Northwest Annual Exhibition.

[13] Through Takizaki he met and became close friends with the painter Mark Tobey,[14] which led Horiuchi to re-examine his own approach to art.

At its most basic level, he was combining 'Eastern' shikishi design[definition needed] with 'Western' abstract expressionism, but injecting it with a unique energy, perhaps born of Horiuchi's numerous personal ups and downs and dislocations.

Paul indulged his love of expensive bonsai trees, while Bernadette continued her 22-year career at the International Branch of Seattle First National Bank.

Said Michiaki Kawakita, curator in chief of Japan's National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo: "He is fast approaching the complete mastery of his new technique [...] His work is of the finest produced today".

Since 1956, Horiuchi's work has been exhibited several times in Japan and was celebrated in a 2003 solo show at the Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art.