Masaoki Mitsutake is a Japanese painter whose work attempts to escape the bounds of a particular style or classification. Aiming for the blurry middle ground between abstraction and concrete figurative work, Mitsutake employs a plethora of techniques in each of his series, ranging from non-objective abstract pieces that make use of heavily impastoed paint to explore the interaction of texture and color, to daubed or roughly painted portraits that seem more concerned with capturing the essence of the subject than an exact likeness.

Mitsutake’s portraits, which comprise a large amount of his oeuvre, are exceptionally expressive displays of emotion. Wielding a powerful faculty for color, he is able to summon the contours of a portrait out of the background to whatever degree he pleases, with some appearing only subtly from within the dense cascade of brushstrokes he creates.