Daniel Mitsui's work harkens back to an earlier time, when monks in monasteries sat in scriptoriums and created beautifully painted illuminations to go along with their hand-written and hand-printed Bibles. Those days are long ago, my friends. (European scriptoria began in the Middle Ages and continued throughout the 15th century), but Mitsui, a contemporary artist from Chicago, is continuing that tradition and he is creating a big name in religious circles.
Mitsui began drawing his images of saints and religious scenes when he was in college. His religious fervor grew once he finished his studies at Dartmouth College, and he embarked upon a field that is not common for contemporary religious artists - manuscript illuminations. The historical background of making these images goes back to a period before Europe had developed paper. They worked on a surface taken from stomach linings of sheep, goats and calfs - vellum - and created some of the most inspiring art of the day. This came from monks who worked for hours everyday in a monastery; men who were not trained artisans.
His style shows evidence of his study of earlier manuscripts, with a singular line detailing the saint and filling in the background with decorative details. But he has put his own unique twist upon the work to include references that include his own Asian background, so in some illuminations, there are characters that look European, and some that look as they were from the Far East. The sway of the figures in some compositions look like figures one would find in Japan or from Colonial period statuettes from the Philippines. Their curve is gentle and their faces appear serene.
He hand-colors the drawings, and the offset images printed from his drawings. He embellishes the saints' halos with gold and palladium gilding. The colors are spectacularly colorful, and the flow of the figures fills the foreground while his textured backgrounds and the figures' robes blend together in a manner that reminds us if illuminations from the famed Dutch Limbourg brothers, or the monks of Ireland that produced the highly complex Celtic manuscript illuminations from the 6th-9th centuries.
Mitsui borrows generously, and uniquely, from artistic details found in art of the Middle Ages; using deer, lizzards, dragons, and elephants from India, plus fabric patterns found in the paintings of the Northern Renaissance masters like van Eyck. The patterns involved complex eastern, middle eastern and western designs traded by wealthy fabric merchants who traded between Europe and China.
In a move that is at once genius and pragmatic, Mitsui has added a component to his work that would appeal to art collectors, as well as draw the interest of children. He has developed a series of coloring books for children(and I would venture to add adults since the coloring book craze has enraptured adult audiences of late). Building an appreciative audience on all ages, Mitsui's is on his way to becoming one of the best contemporary religious artists of today. His work is engaging, contemplative, curiously entertaining in addition to educating the masses on the history of the medium, and bringing a new audience to appreciating religious art. We can only look forward to more of his continued successes.
If you are interested to see more of Mitsui's work, learn more about the artist or order some of his coloring books, go to www.danielmitsui.com. The exhibition at Komechak Art Gallery runs through July 31, 2017. Summer hours: Monday - Thursday 10 a.m.-4 p.m. www.ben.edu/artgallery ph. 63-829-6270
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