There is a quiet sophistication in Milt Kobayashi’s painted canvases, summoning a pensive, etheral feeling in the viewer. Kobayashi’s subjects are people from another time and place, yet, they ae strangely familiar. They are urban dwellers lost in thought as they take a momentary respite from their routine. Kobayashi’s people are absorbed in the world of contemplation and meditation–making them attractively aloof.

A third generation Japanese-American, Kobayashi was born in New York City, soon after that this family moved to Oahu, Hawaii, and then ventured to Los Angeles when he was eight. After receiving his B.A. in 1970 from the University of California-Los Angeles, Kobayashi began working as an illustrator. In 1977, Kobayashi returned to New York City. As a young illustrator working in New York, Kobayashi frequented the Metropolitan Museum of Art to study the old masters — Sargent, Chase, Duvanek, Vuillard and especially the paintings of Velazquez. Strangely enough, it was through the study of western masters, especially Whistler, that Kobayashi became aware of Japanese art and “the Japanese floating world of Edo”. He began studying the 16th and 17th century Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock print masters Hokasai, Sharaku and Utamaro. The whole perspective of Japanese art allures him — the patterns, color, harmonies, use of negative space, and primarily, composition and design.