Shirley Sakatani is a Kitsap artist who paints flowers based on her inspiration from Washington state’s flora. She lived in Southern California, and seeing the plants and foliage of this area was a new experience for her when she moved here in 1996.
“I’ve always loved to do flowers,” she said. “But it is something so different up in Washington to learn about peonies and dahlias. … I am enamored by them (local flowers).”
Sakatani follows the impressionism style for her flower paintings.
“I want a different, painterly effect. That’s my impressionist background, I think,” she said. “I want all the colors to float around.”
When she paints her flowers, she prefers to create peonies. “They are luminescent and so many layers and the glow,” she explained. “I’m still learning how to capture the glow in them, because if you put too many layers on it, you’ll lose that luminous quality.”
Growth, botanically and artistically, is a joy for Sakatani. “I love being able to just be in my private, quiet space … and just being able to create and capture the light or make things better and better and take it to the next level,” she said. “Layers and layers — take it to the best it can be. I feel like being by myself, creating, is the best part of it.”
Sakatani believes her artistic gifts became evident when she was in kindergarten, when she began winning art contests. “I was always creative,” she said. “My parents are very creative and my grandparents, too.”
Later in life, she planned to study illustration after college, thinking she would do “small art.” She joined James Dobson with Focus on the Family because the company had a magazine that used illustrators like her. Sakatani took a clerical position and even got to write for the company, but art was not in the cards for her at that time.
But that changed eventually. In 2014, she began to teach painting workshops, which she continues to this day. In 2018, she was finally able to become a full-time artist.
Flowers are her main focus, but Sakatani uses her heritage as well. “I really threw myself into acrylics: large florals and koi,” she said. “Some of my Japanese heritage from growing up in California, my family history of going to the internment camps in Wyoming from 1942 to 1945; I do artwork about that.” The tangible meaning behind these pieces are mirrored by her flowers.
“I feel like there is a purpose with my life and my art and why I’m here that’s deeper than just me creating art,” she said. “I think there’s something more than that in my [Christian] faith. … Most of my titles have something usually to do with my time right then in my life, and so I like to focus on, ‘What is God telling me at this moment through people I know or the struggles or the tragedies?’ One was called ‘Prayers,’ and it really was prayers but for Ukraine.”
Through her artwork, Sakatani seeks to touch the lives of viewers spiritually.
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