Artist Allan West Portrays Nature’s Splendor with Japanese Paints, but in His World, Plants Aren’t Just Plants

By Kenneth Valencich / Japan News Staff Writer

18:10 JST, May 8, 2025

Allan West entered the room backgrounded by a calming painting of a flowering plum tree draped in snow. He was wearing his signature look: A Zen priest shirt, craftsman’s pants, a sleeveless jacket and tabi socks.

His way of dressing is tailored to visually signal his career as an artist who paints using the crushed minerals associated with traditional nihonga Japanese painting. His paintings are filled with vibrant colors, covering the canvas while avoiding solid black or white, in an active design structure that conveys a feeling of motion throughout.

West was born in the United States and first came to Japan over 40 years ago specifically in search of Japanese pigments, which can endure years and harsh light without losing their luster. He loves depicting subjects from nature, making flowing trees and colorful birds on things like folding screens and hanging scrolls.

In 2024, he published “They Hang Me in Tokyo,” his autobiography.

He sat down with The Japan News for an interview in his studio in Taito Ward, Tokyo, to discuss his continuing work to develop and grow his art. Throughout the discussion, he wore a friendly smile and laughed easily.

West tends to avoid getting hung up on nihonga as a genre, focusing on making artwork with a lasting appeal for himself and those who commission his work.

“The effort we put into making art has to have a strong motivation,” he said. “Whatever needs there are in expression tend to be met by the paint they land on.”

Painting from nature

West was drawn to Japanese art in part because of the vibrant colors — produced by mixing crushed minerals and nikawa animal protein. The hues work beautifully in depictions of nature, which are West’s specialty.

Throughout his book, a large Himalayan cedar tree near his studio is mentioned regularly. The tree itself is a common subject of his art, but it is not the only plant to grace his work with some frequency.

West’s workshop is filled with depictions of different types of plants overlapping in beautiful combinations and gorgeous birds ready to take flight. His works have been displayed in Buddhist temples, as well as famous museums and galleries around the world.

He said he enjoys adding to his repertoire of plants, though he has often returned to pine trees and wisteria, a pairing common in the Edo period (1603-1867). According to tradition, pine hints at longevity, but it is lacking in dynamism. When wisteria climbs up the branches of a pine, it creates a “sense of those two plants becoming a single, beautiful thing.”

West’s art, however, is more than just depictions of nature. When on commission, “I often search for plant life that I can associate with that person or that they identify with themselves,” he said, adding that straight portraiture can pose a challenge as fashions in personal appearance change over the years, often resulting in an unfavorable view of the painting later on.

Plants, through people’s enduring attachments to them, can serve as an artistic surrogate for the individual. In his book, West even describes painting his family as trees.

Experimenting and collaborating

West sees collaboration as something which takes many forms. Of course, working together with another artist is collaboration, but so are art collective events and commissions.

He once painted a massive picture live on stage in response to a musician’s accompanying performance.

He also paints fans for use in noh and kabuki performances, as well as for Shinto rituals. He has even embellished desks for linked verse poetry writing.

Someone once asked that he produce paintings for a gallery using tobacco pipe ash as the sole pigment. The request gave him pause, and he thought that this was “one of those I would refuse,” but he was curious about how such an outlandish paint material would work and if it even would.

He described the mixture of tobacco ash and nikawa as ultimately being like finger paint in consistency and impossible to use with brushes. This resulted in paintings with a curious and subtle brown coloration, and, while likely not as permanent as his usual work, they sold phenomenally well.

All these are projects he views as collaborations.

When working on commission, he speaks with the client to get a sense of who they are and what they are looking for, even when they are unable to put such fundamentals into words.

Looking to the future

Over the decades, West has been working toward a design style “combining very stable plant forms with very active motion linework.”

He feels that he is finally ready to start painting with this style he has been developing by putting his own spin on the linework of the Kano school, established in the 15th century, which he has studied extensively. “I can have the wildness of the brush strokes when other elements [including the linework] can look well intentioned and carefully thought out,” he said.

Whatever he makes in this style is bound to be captivating.

While he has consistently worked to improve his art, he says the core of his work is always his own. When he arrived in Japan, he was not interested in being influenced by Japanese art. His goal was to make beautiful pieces regardless of the style he employed.

Even when he had to match his brushwork to a Buddhist temple’s aesthetic for a work he did not sign his name to, he still managed to leave his mark. Though the painting was made in secret, an associate who saw it recognized the art as West’s.

He views nihonga as an overall concept that has not radically changed in the past 40 years. What has changed is the culture around it.

According to West, many young Japanese people raised in a westernized setting see their traditions and history as “slightly exotic and, in many respects, more remote. And because of that, there’s a renewed interest.”

People are rediscovering not only the art itself but also the crafts that support it. They are learning how to make paper and pigments, as well as how to mount a scroll, which he said gives him hope for the future of the art’s growth and sustainability.

For those looking to explore nihonga, he said the field is more welcoming than ever before. Traditional art supply shops do not screen their clientele as strictly as they once did and materials have become far more readily available.

Before artists consider nihonga materials for their own work, he recommends they ask themselves, “What is my art?”

Each type of painting material has its own strengths and weaknesses. He recommends artists first take a deep dive into their personal style, what they want to create and find the most suitable materials. “If the choice of nihonga materials matches that, it ends up working.”

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Allan West

Born in 1962, Allan West grew up in Washington D.C. After graduating from Carnegie Mellon University College of Fine Arts, he came to Japan and obtained a master’s degree from Tokyo University of the Arts. He has had multiple exhibitions, including at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

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