Tim Okamura

100% of the profit from this release will support The Heidelberg Arts Leadership Academy.

"My painting 'Everybody VS Injustice' is focused on the notion that it truly takes Everybody, to not only demand, but to enact remedies to social injustice. However, the complexities surrounding the issues at stake make this goal inherently challenging.

"This painting was created to capture a feeling of tension between hope and uncertainty. There can be seen a strength in her pose: she is resolute and stoic in standing her ground, but conversely are we are seeing movement in the process of her putting hands up in surrender? Her arms may be spread in anticipation of embracing a sense of wholeness, a global movement, oneness, but simultaneously could she be referencing martyrdom? Without seeing her hands, we are missing a vital clue.

"The background was created in a way that allowed for organic, sometimes uncontrolled, formations of color and value. It's become increasingly clear in looking at this painting now that it symbolizes the pandemic. Exposed to chaos and the threat of uncontrollable external forces, she stands in defiance - to make a proclamation." –Tim Okamura

Tim Okamura investigates identity, the urban environment, metaphor, and cultural iconography through a unique method of painting – one that combines an essentially ‘realist’ approach to the figure with collage, spray paint and mixed media. The juxtaposition of the rawness and urgency of street art and academic ideals has created a visual language that acknowledges a traditional form of story-telling through portraiture, while infusing the work with resonant contemporary motifs.

Born in Edmonton, Canada, painter Tim Okamura earned a B.F.A. with Distinction at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, Canada before moving to New York City to attend the School of Visual Arts in 1991. After graduating with an M.F.A. in Illustration as Visual Journalism, Okamura moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he continues to live and work.

Okamura – a recipient of the 2004 Fellowship in Painting from the New York Foundation for the Arts – has exhibited extensively in galleries throughout the world, including the U.S., Canada, Italy, Japan, Ecuador and Turkey, and has been selected nine times to appear in the prestigious BP Portrait Award Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, England.

In 2006, Okamura was short-listed by the Royal Surveyor of the Queen’s Picture Collection for a commissioned portrait of the Queen of England.

In 2013, the University of North Carolina hosted a retrospective exhibition of Okamura’s work that focused on nearly a decade of production.

In 2015, Okamura received a letter of commendation from the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden.

He was honored in 2016 to have a piece hanging in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Tim Okamura’s art is on display in the permanent collections of the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, The Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Toronto Congress Center, the Hotel Arts in Calgary, Canada, and Standard Chartered Bank in London, England. Celebrity collectors include Uma Thurman, musicians John Mellencamp, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson (The Roots), director Ben Younger, as well as actors Bryan Greenberg, Vanessa Marcil, Annabella Sciorra, and Ethan Hawke.