The Accidental Artist

An incidental art class at the Club inspired decades of devoted creation for one Member.

The first thing that greets visitors to Kaoru Rudlin’s Tokyo apartment is an impressively large painting of a traditional ikebana flower arrangement. The nearly 2-meter-tall, textured canvas, with its long, elegant reeds cutting across the frame, wouldn’t be out of place in one of Ginza’s high-end art galleries.

Only this piece was painted by the host herself.

“It was a coincidence,” Rudlin, 63, says of the first time she picked up a brush more than three decades ago. “A friend from my tennis class at the Club invited me to join her for her next oil painting lesson, and I just kept going back.”

From that chance invitation, Rudlin would go on to study under famed artist and longtime Club instructor Shinjiro Nakamura for five years before immersing herself in the techniques of sumi-e ink wash painting with Akiko Kikuchi for a decade.

In 2017, keen to explore yet another fine art tradition, Rudlin enrolled in a two-year course in Japanese nihonga painting at the Kyoto University of the Arts.

“There were students like myself who still had a lot to learn, but there were also students who were actively exhibiting their work,” she says. “Then, in the January before graduation, I learned that one of my pieces was selected for an exhibition.”

And not just any gallery exhibition. It would be displayed in the National Art Center in Roppongi.

“It really made me think, ‘Well, I guess I’m not so bad after all,’” she says.

Over the following two years, Rudlin’s works appeared in exhibitions across Tokyo and in Yamanashi Prefecture.

In the apartment she shares with her husband, Rudlin’s studio is a small room off the den. Dozens of canvases in varying stages of completion lean against the walls, with boxes of brushes of all shapes and sizes stacked on top of one another.

“I can’t find everything I need here in Tokyo,” she says. “There’s a specialty shop in Kyoto where I buy my gold and silver leaf for nihonga paintings.”

Despite her dedication and growing exposure, Rudlin has yet to find a buyer for any of her works. Not that she’s concerned. Making money from her art was never a goal, she says.

Instead, Rudlin paints for her own enjoyment. Her most recently completed piece was inspired by the ever-evolving skyline outside her apartment window. In it, the city’s iconic steel lattice tower, partially obscured by a forest of construction cranes, shines like a red-and-white beacon through the top of the frame.

“Nowadays, I often find myself having to start new pieces whenever inspiration strikes,” Rudlin says. “I quite enjoy it.”

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Words: Owen Ziegler
Top image of Kaoru Rudlin: Kayo Yamawaki