During the past several years Masako Kamiya has attracted much attention in the Boston art scene for her modestly-sized and taciturn accumulations of thousands and thousands of daubs of paint, which strike many viewers as exhilarating cascades of visual information.  Her surfaces are thoroughly populated by tiny dots of color, and many of these droplets are built atop one another, constructing tiny stalagmites of paint that spike forward toward the viewer.

In her newest paintings, which Kamiya describes as “a more experimental body of work,” the topography of her surfaces has changed.  What was a more evenly distributed array of peaks of consistent height is now a terrain of clustered towers here and low valleys there.  More than ever the works seem aerial and vast.

“They’re almost risk-takingly higher,” Kamiya says.  “I’m really interested in the highly developed textures.  The perceptions are very different as a result.  You have to walk through the surface to perceive the color relationships, more the way you experience sculpture.  For me, it’s almost more like making an object.  It’s an interesting question.  I am painting, but I’m also making an object.”