WHEN I FIND I’M PRETTY GOOD AT SOMETHING, I GIVE IT UP TO START SOMETHING NEW.

Every now and then, when I find I’m pretty good at something, I give it up to start something new. I do it to expand who I am, and I find it’s good for creativity. It takes me out of my comfort zone and back to a beginner’s mind, which is hard to get back to when you’ve been doing this as long as I have.

For example, I quit playing softball after twenty years and starting taking aikido. I was horrible at first because it takes awhile to get the proper mindset and learn your way around something new. The new paintings I’m doing are about things that go on in aikido and the martial arts influence. It’s about bringing in Japanese pop influence and things that are going on in the art scene.

Inspiration is everything for me. Everyone I meet and everything I see inspires me. I go to a lot of museums to recharge my batteries and to see things from the past—sculpture, paintings, art objects, or architecture. I make doodles in a notebook, buy a postcard, or sneak a photo. I also have a big library of art books and history books I go through when I’m in a dead zone, hoping they will trigger something in my brain, give me a direction to explore. Really, everything is influenced by something else. We’re a product of what goes on around us visually and culturally. There’s a visual language that changes every decade or so, and as visual people, we need to be aware of these changes and adapt to them.

For my Japanese pop series, I made canvases out of metal. I use metal or plastic or wood or whatever is around. The self-generated work that I do gets me work and expands me creatively. It’s like a snapshot of what goes on in my mind. People will see that and say they want to do something like that for a client. Constrictions can also be inspiring. When the field is too wide open, it’s hard to know where to go and what to do—you feel lost with no direction. Some parameters actually make me more creative.

I’m focusing on Japan and getting in touch with my heritage, assimilating that culture into my artwork.

I’m getting back in touch with my own heritage through aikido. My parents were put in concentration camps, so when I was growing up, they were cautious about me being too Japanese. They wanted me to assimilate into southern California culture and not stand out too much, as I was one of the few Asian people in my city. So, I grew up more American than Japanese. With aikido, I’m getting back in touch with who my ancestors are. All the aikido movements are in the Japanese language. It is touching something inside me more than anything else ever has.

I’m combining Japanese sensibilities with aikido as my inspiration and finding it to be very powerful. Aikido is all defensive, and you use your opponents’ energy to put them in an armlock or other defensive move. This blend of energies is creeping into my paintings.

Now that I know how to throw someone with a wrist turn and take the fall from it, I thought it would be fun to create Ultraman characters doing these aikido moves.

This is Ultraman, a Japanese character from the 1970s. He was the sci-fi answer to Star Trek in the United States, and he’s become a cult figure ever since. He’s practicing aikido on monsters and other characters from the show.

I paint Ultraman characters practicing different aikido throws. I use my son’s plastic action figures as models for the details. I paint on metal canvases using acrylic and enamel paint and a lot of materials I don’t usually use in my normal illustrations.