“Garden Of Light”: Twilights And Nocturne Painting Of Keita Morimoto

Toronto artist Keita Morimoto notes that New Yorkers all love New York but Torontonians always complain about their city: He is the rare painter to romanticize this place.

Morimoto’s paintings, in general, combine an eclectic mix of historic, contemporary and personal influences. The artist caught the art world’s eye with paintings of street youth lionized by dramatic effects of light and colour, but he is now also producing nighttime views of corner stores and fast-food joints that tip their hat to the early 20th-century American realist Edward Hopper. Perhaps it takes an outsider to consider Toronto through such a dramatic lens: Morimoto left Japan as a teenager, and completed high school in Belleville, Ont., before arriving in the city he now depicts as mysterious and majestic.

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