Kaoru Mansour, a native of Japan, is an artist based in Los Angeles. Her artwork has varied over the past few years, ranging from geometric abstract paintings on paper to her more recent botanical collage elements on wooden panels.

Mansour grew up in a small mountainous village. She has vivid, early childhood memories of playing with, studying and even eating the tremendous varieties of seasonal plants in the lush forests of Japan. As she began her formal training as an artist at Otis Parsons Art Institute in Los Angeles in 1987, the impact of her remembered natural surroundings emerged. While her work evolved over the years, botanical imagery has always figured into her work. 

Mansour’s current body of work connects images of plants with abstract mark making. The artist gatherers plants and flowers, uses whatever she finds of interest during a particular season. She transfers images of single, simple and solitary specimens onto panels. A muted, butter-like background is glazed over to form a cracked, raku-like surface - a small gesture to her Japanese heritage. Mansour draws colored circles and other small ink markings on the panels, enhancing the underlying beauty of the lone form. These uncomplicated, focused pieces elegantly integrate graphic and organic expressions.

 

While the viewer may recognize a particular type of plant or flower, the image is always reduced: a flower stripped of leaves or a stem without a main branch. At the end of the painting journey, the delicately colored organic forms are covered with twenty to thirty different layers of encaustic, which gives her work a rich and highly textured appearance. 

 

Her compositions crop the extraneous elements from the composition to highlight the abstract beauty and significant form of her chosen specimen. Her delicate markings whirl around and attach to the subtle branches, creating new, ethereal plant forms that are incisive with their precision and fantastically whimsical.

 

Over the last few years, Kaoru has been working for numerous art consultants and galleries in California and other states. Her works have been purchased for various commercial buildings, TV shows, Movies, record covers and private collectors. Currently she maintains her studio and residence in Tujunga, California.