Artwork copyright Lani Tanaka. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Cat's Life, 1996

Lani Tanaka
(American, born 1961)

Location: Moxee Elementary School, Moxee

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Cat's Life is a narrative painting by artist Lani Tanaka. The composition combines symbolic figures and objects, including a cat, a flying fish, and a birdhouse. This piece is part of a body of work created in response to the artist's family history and relationship to fishing and the ocean. Her father was one of over 10,000 Japanese-Americans imprisoned at Manzanar Internment Camp in California during World War II in the 1940s. She notes, "Sometimes on the way to a remote fishing spot we would make a pilgrimage to Manzanar. We would get out of the car and take pictures of each other in front of ruined watchtowers and barbed wire. My father called the place "camp". I was confused and embarrassed when in 8th grade I learned what "camp" was. Ever since that moment I realized how the mind and heart find ways to process and cope with things painful and confusing. How in real time we deal with so little. We bury things for later… I see my history in my painting. Sometimes the idea is oblique sometimes skewed, but I think it is just a different and sometimes better way of taking things, a new perspective. No one thinks or sees exactly alike. I think painting is a way explore what I see and feel."

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with East Valley School District (Yakima).

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Artist Lani Tanaka creates figurative paintings that illustrate intimate settings and private worlds. She lives and works in San Francisco, California.