Nobu Haihara

Nobu Haihara is a multi-talented artist who continues to expand his horizons by challenging his own creative instincts. He is an accomplished landscape painter, portrait artist, super-realist and graphic artist. But his energy and ideas keep him constantly active and evolving as a painter.

Raised in Koura, Japan, Nobu credits his parents as early influences on his artistic future. He absorbed Japanese and western culture, and was especially drawn to books on Monet, Da Vinci, and Michelangelo. He visited museums and trained in the traditional Japanese arts; but it was in his parent’s grocery store that Nobu found his calling. Brightly colored and graphically enticing images bombarded him as he opened packages of dry goods from America to arrange on shelves. The product designs were powerful and mesmerizing to the young Nobu, who began to see advertisements as art. He studied them, drew them and incorporated their ideas into his own emerging style. In school Nobu studied classical and modern art, but his interests kept gravitating towards Pop Art.

After graduating from Hiroshima Economic University, Nobu immigrated to the United States in 1986. He arrived in Venice, California, a well-known artist’s community, and began selling his paintings on the Venice Boardwalk, which led to numerous commissions. Soon recognized for his creativity, Nobu began showing his artwork in galleries.

In the early 1900’s Nobu learned the art of silk-screening and was successfully reproducing and selling his artwork as serigraphs and mono-prints on paper, glass, aluminum and canvas. He developed a style reminiscent of the traditional Japanese Ukiyoe wood-block prints that combine images with poetry and verse. Nobu became inspired to create silk screen prints of clocks, telephones, wine bottles and martinis - with their history or recipes written across them in a decorative narrative style.

By 1991 Nobu directed the state-of-the-art atelier at Marco Fine Arts working on prints for Robert Indiana, Donald Sultan, John Asaro, John Nieto, Aldo Luongo and other accomplished artists the company was publishing. Alongside his professional achievements as a printer maker, Nobu continued his private work developing his own distinctive style. Painting in both acrylic and oil, Nobu applied his knowledge to create his own cutting-edge modernist images that explore the boundaries between commercial and fine art.