Tomio Nitto and the Slow Outside
The artist strolls through the city like a Zen monk, observing and capturing the essence of places and things in his art.
This is the second of a series of four articles about process. I’ll be posting about how artists and visual journalists bridge the gap between what’s personal and what’s commercial, creating in ways literal or metaphorical; and making art inside the studio or out in the world.
There’s something beautiful and metaphorical about choosing to walk slowly next to a river that flows parallel to a busy highway. Artist Tomio Nitto walks along a path next to Toronto’s Don River gazing at the patterns created by the reflections in the water as the Don Valley Parkway roars by.
He sees how the water moves, the way light shimmers across the surface, and the fragile leaves that drift by. He’s captivated by the current as it weaves around rocks, creating shapes in the frothy white foam. He pours these observations into his watercolors. He’s now content to make beautiful art from what he sees.
‘In the past when I was an illustrator, I had to focus on ideas, the idea in the article (and) make a picture using that idea. Now, I just like drawing. I want to keep things simple. I respect Nature. I feel that sketching is more respectful. It is not (about) composing a picture. Instead I just focus on being in Nature and (draw) whatever most interests me.’
In his 40-year career as an illustrator, he created richly detailed illustrations for clients eager to promote their products or tell their stories. His iconic pastel-colored imagery was highly sought after. Now, he has chosen to focus solely on drawing and painting what he observes during his walks around the city. This realization came to him on a beach in Miami, where he felt a sense of calm while watching bathers and surfers. He craved freedom from the confines of his studio and the limitations of commercial commissions.
Born in a small town in Japan, Tomio moved to Tokyo to work as a graphic designer. In the early 1970’s. He ventured further and hopped a freighter bound for San Francisco, then took a Greyhound bus across the country. Eventually he arrived in Canada and took a job designing brochures and ads. Not long after he became a freelance illustrator for magazines and advertising. Tomio also wrote and illustrated about an intrepid beaver in The Red Rock: A Graphic Fable. Here are some of his illustrations.
Tomio’s watercolors retain the chroma of his commercial work. But now there’s a delicacy to the way he handles transparency and tonal depths that you often see in Japanese brush painting.
Tomio Nitto strolls through the city like a Zen monk, observing as he walks and capturing the essence of places and things in his art. Abandoning the distractions of a computer and cell phone, he immerses himself in the moment. Perhaps it’s his intrinsic Japanese aesthetic that encourages him to slow down and appreciate the beauty woven into the fabric of the world.
More to Know:
Check out the Wim Wenders film Perfect Days about a Tokyo public toilet cleaner, who takes analog photos of trees on his lunch break and finds beauty in the everyday.
I’ve been writing about the process artists go through. I wrote about Robert Weaver and how he transposed his on-site drawings into published illustrations. I wrote about Frank Hodgkinson and the visual diary he made on his journey up New Guinea’s Sepik River.
Beautiful, I really enjoyed this. Thank you