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Downtown art gallery features Salem artist that experiments with color, layering and texture

“The Truth In Microcosm Is So Loud It Hurts (ii)” by artist M. Shoki Tanabe (Courtesy/Salem on the Edge)

Salem on the Edge, a gallery located at 156 Liberty St. N.E., is featuring Salem artist Shoki Tanabe until Nov. 27.

Tanabe was born in Tokyo and came to Salem with his parents at four months old.

He received his undergraduate degree in painting and writing from Willamette University in 2008. His interest in art developed at a young age when he began flipping through various art books of his mother’s, who majored in art history at Willamette. His work experiments with color, layering and texture to convey form. 

In a memorandum, Tanabe said people are an amalgam of their memories and are a part of the landscapes through which they move.

I see myself in my paintings. In a greater sense, my paintings are me, because they are my memories and they are the landscapes of my life. And, my paintings are also you, because you also have memories, and you have landscapes (since I believe you are memories and you are landscapes),” he wrote.

“So, my paintings might show you something about yourself. In finding one thing, or more, you are constructing a veritable Venn diagram of our being. How strange and wonderful, don’t you think? Maybe we are not so disconnected, after all.”

-Saphara Harrell