In fall 2023 da portrait of da late Senator Daniel Inouye wuz unveiled in Washington D.C. And who wuz da artist chosen for dis prestigious gig? Wuz none oddah than Baldwin High, class of 1992 grad, Maui boy Kirk Kurokawa, 50. He stay SOM [really, really] famous now, but aftah finishing art school, he had couple-few bouts of self doubt. Fortunately each time da universe wen steer him back to his artistic passion for portraiture. Today he no can imagine himself doing anyting oddah than painting and turns out das all tanks to sage advice about rocks that he got from one of Hawai‘i’s most well known abstract expressionists.
* * * * *
Lee Tonouchi (LT): Eh Kirk, what your ethnic backgrounds?
Kirk Kurokawa (KK): Mostly Japanese, a little bit of Chinese, a little bit of Hawaiian.
LT: How you identify as? Hapa? Hawaiian? Local Japanese? Japanese American? Nikkei? Any of those?
KK: I don’t know. I guess just Local. I thought about this back in college. I feel like in Hawai‘i we don’t necessarily identify ourselves. It’s just, I’m from Hawai‘i. But as I get older, I think I kinda lean more towards Japanese culture.
LT: What area you grew up in?
KK: I was born and raised in Kahului. But now I live in Wailuku. But I mean, almost the same. We’re towns right next to each other.
KK: When we were kids, we used to ride our bikes everywhere and go get shave ice. We would go to this little washerette to get shave ice. I can’t remember the name, but they had good shave ice and there was video games in the back.
LT: And you could do laundry there too?
KK: Yup. I forget what it was called.
LT: I texting Maui historian Kathy Collins as we speak. Ho! She texted me back already. W & F Washerette she said. Her faddah’s friend wuz co-owner.
KK: Yeah! I knew there were initials in it.
LT: So this place you could do laundry, play video games, AND eat shave ice, huh?
KK: Oh, and they used to sell hot dogs too!
LT: Hahahahaha. Of course. Das too funny. K, so how you came interested in art?
KK: I’m one of those kids that just was always drawing. And then in grade school at Lihikai, there used to be this poster contest every year, so maybe in third or fourth grade I won. My teacher Mrs. Masusako noticed I had some talent and she mentioned it to my mom. So my mom put me into all sorts of art classes. Like I did a drawing class, a painting class, I even did a ceramics class.
LT: When you came interested in portraiture in particulars?
KK: That’s probably when I went to the California College of the Arts. It’s in San Francisco and Oakland, California. I majored in Illustration, so I did a lot of caricatures. People was my favorite thing to draw. I got my BFA with distinction, but I was struggling in California. Art is a tough business, so I decided to come back home to Maui and regroup.
LT: And tings wuz mo’ easier for you ova hea?
KK: What happened was I had moved back and then several months later in 2003, there was a show that opened called the Schaefer Portrait Challenge. And it’s a statewide juried competition. Prior to that I had tried entering a few shows and I had never gotten in. And when this portrait show came up, I was actually on the verge of just saying, I’m going to go back to school to learn something else. Maybe art isn’t for me. But I decided to enter this one last show and give it one more shot. So I entered a couple of my pieces, and one piece got in. It’s what made me decide to stick it out. I said I’m going to just see what I can do painting here in Hawai‘i.
LT: Who you grateful to in your journey in coming dis renowned portrait artist?
KK: Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
LT: We go circle back around to that one den. When you do portraits, you work from one photograph or you have da subject sit still for five years?
KK: [Laughing] So once I get a commission or an assignment to do a portrait, I usually work from my own photographs. So that’s part of my process. But I’ll also go and talk to the subject and interview them to get to know them. This part is probably my favorite part where we just talk story about random stuff. This is where I kind of start to see who they are and I’m taking photographs while talking to them. It helps my process. I will also try and draw sketches of them while I’m interviewing them as well. That just helps with my memory of their features and things like that. So it’s both live and from photos. And then from there I bring all that information back home with me to do the portrait. The whole process can take months.
LT: Nowdays get all kine computery kine filters where people can take one photo, run ’em through one filter and make ’em look like one painting. You worried portrait art might be one dying art?
KK: Yes and no. I think some of that will get replaced, but I think for traditional portraits, that’s not gonna go away. Because I think there’s importance with it. People commission me to paint a family member. They’re planning to keep that artwork forever. It’s an heirloom. So I think that’s where it’s different.
LT: Is it hard being one artist?
KK: So art-wise my life has had its ups and downs. It’s like everybody’s life. Art was going really well. And then the Great Recession hit in 2007–2008 and everything went away. So I decided to go be a bike mechanic. And I did that for a couple of years thinking I don’t know what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. But then I applied for a portrait commission with the State of Hawai‘i for Governor Neil Abercrombie. And I remember I was working at a bike shop when I get a call from the state asking if I can come over for an interview. So I fly over to O‘ahu. Long story short, it was one of the best interviews. Governor Abercrombie is an awesome dude. Very, very nice. We kind of hit it off right away. So I got the job. And it changed the trajectory of my career. You’re in a different game when you’re painting a governor.
LT: Wow! Seems like everytime you tinking of calling it quits, da universe gives you one sign. So how you got your biggest gig yet, your portrait of da late Senator Daniel Inouye?
KK: So everything is connected. I was painting up a mural at the Nisei Veterans Memorial Center on Maui and they chose me because the director there, Deidre Tegarden had worked with Governor Abercrombie. And then I had budgeted finishing this mural in a month, but I ended up working on it for like six months. It was crazy. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. But being a perfectionist allowed me to be in the right place at the right time.
So several months passed and the mural was almost done, not quite. And the Nisei Veterans Memorial Center had this big meeting there with politicians. So all these state senators and representatives were there, and they invited me to come and join them for pupus because I was still there, still working on the mural.
So I mingled a bit. Tony Takitani, who was the emcee at Governor Abercrombie’s portrait unveiling, he was there with Jennifer Sabas who used to work as Senator Daniel Inouye’s Chief of Staff. They were talking when Tony says, “You need a portrait artist? This is the guy!” And he points to me. And then in like a few months, I was meeting regularly with Jennifer and Senator Inouye’s wife.
LT: So everyting wuz super fast after that?
KK: It was painstakingly slow, because I got the commission to do Senator Inouye’s portrait... and then Covid hit. So Covid delayed this whole thing. We decided to do things remotely, but the process was definitely slower than had I been able to fly over to D.C. and talk to people and see things in person. And after that, the January 6 Capitol riot happened where the Capitol was raided and all that. So that slowed things down again because now all the people that we were working with at D.C. had to catalog all the artwork and things that were damaged in the riot. So all of the curators that we were working with were busy doing that and that slowed our process down on completing the portrait. The actual painting of the portrait took maybe three months. Maybe a little more. But the planning part was super long.
LT: It wuz unveiled on October 25, 2023. Try tell us about that experience.
KK: The unveiling was amazing. I was meeting people that you only see on TV, like Senators Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz. It’s just this amazing thing to know that I painted a painting that’s hanging in the nation’s capitol and in all likelihood that thing is going to be there and last forever.
LT: Brah, das so awesome! Okay, hana hou [one more time], so who you grateful to in your artistic journey?
KK: I think I’m going to pick Tadashi Sato. He was a really well known Maui artist. Before he passed away I painted him for a 2006 portrait challenge and I won that competition with that portrait. The sad thing is that he actually passed away before the portrait was finished. So he never actually saw my finished portrait of him.
In the process of doing his portrait I got to spend a lot of time with him at his house in Lahaina where we talked about all kinds of stuff. Like we’d be just sitting around chit-chatting about books, art, and family. It was a pivotal moment for me because it changed how I thought about art. And even how I approached life.
The way he spoke was almost like a Zen master. Like I asked him, “After these years of painting, how do you stay motivated to keep on creating? Because for me, I get tired of it, you know, I have these ruts.” So he stopped and thought for a second. Then he said, “It could be just... a pebble on the ground...”
And then that was it! Like, that’s all he said!!!
LT: He wuz telling you for take up rock collecting? I no get it.
KK: I know. At first I didn’t get it too. But it made me think. For him what motivates him was that simple. A pebble on the ground could inspire him. And I’m like holy smokes, I think I have to slow down, look at things, and enjoy the small things... like that nice looking pebble!
And I felt like I could apply that wisdom to my life too. To try and enjoy things and to let things happen and not worry so much.
Early on in my career I would set goals like, Oh, I want to make X amount of dollars for the year. But that was the wrong way for me to go at it. It’s not about money. The rewarding part for me is the connections and relationships that I make doing portraits or just talking story with you like how we’re doing now. It’s these things that are truly what’s most important.
© 2024 Lee A. Tonouchi
