Kana Handel is originally from Tokyo but now calls Gainesville home, and her work has been displayed all around the city–at the Hippodrome, the Sweetwater Print Co-Op, and the Harn Museum of Art. The Center for Children’s Literature and Culture has long admired Kana’s work for the dreamy surreality of her images and the creativity of her mixed media techniques (she uses materials ranging from ink and water colors to paper scraps and milk). Especially, though, we appreciate the interesting way that her work incorporates themes of childhood. In her words:
“I do not necessarily paint for or about children, but for the child in all of us. When people look at my work and I see their eyes shining like a child’s, that makes me very happy. Because there are already too many negative things in the world, being the artist that I am, I want to create positive energy in my work. I do not avoid reality but believe imagination can help us heal. So even though realism shows up from time to time, most of my work is figurative and narrative–in that I love to tell stories. I filter all of the things that are going through my head–nature, politics, love, war, spirituality, peace–and they all come out through my brush in a story. And it’s even better if the story you see is different than the one in my head; we are creating together.”
You can read more about Kana and see more of her work on her website, on Etsy, at the Artisan’s Guild Gallery downtown, and at various arts festivals across Florida.