New work from my friend Pay Katsuyuki

I have known Pay Katusyuki for many years. He is one of my favorite artists and musicians and he and his music appear in many of my videos. He is also a "Ramen-Man" and works as a Ramen Chef. So he is a triple-artist...ramen, music, and paint.

My 5th video introduces Pay, his work and what I think is his best song. He also appears in videos #16, #38 and #56. And his music appears in many others. I get emails from viewers every week asking how they can get Pay's "Sick of Recorder" CD but unfortunately it is out of print.

I just got a message from Pay saying that he has a new band, so I'm excited to hear his new music. He also has a lot of really handsome new paintings on his blog which I hope you will check out. If you watch the 5th video (linked above) from 2007, you will see that his work has changed and grown a lot since then.

Right now, Pay is looking for a gallery show outside of Japan.

One of the things I like about Pay's paintings is that they are very different from what people in the US expect from modern Japanese art(such as Murakami and Kaikai Kiki artists). Pay works with abstracts and uses experimental mediums, sometimes he puts gauze or donut wrappers into his paintings and creates special textures with them. Some of Pay's work is dark and lonesome feeling, while other pieces have a colorful kind of happiness in them. I don't think I've seen anybody else who paints like Pay-kun.

Pay lives in Nagoya but he sometimes shows his work in the U.S. and Canada. He had work in the garage sale section of my gallery show at Billy Shire Fine Arts and also has shown with Cafemode at Shojin in Little Tokyo. You can currently see one of his pieces on display at

QIO select 11614 West Pico Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90064

Life Inside the Peach

I forgot all about this drawing when I was writing my peach blog below. I think I drew this during peach season last year. I decided not to use it in my show at Billy Shire Fine Arts because some friends I showed it to thought it had a different meaning than I intended. They thought the peach looked like something other than a peach. I was very surprised. I guess I'm not very good at drawing peaches yet :)

おばけ桃が行く

I love a peach.  When I was little I read a book called "Obake momo ga iku" about a little boy who finds a giant peach and lives inside of it with some friendly insects. I don't know what the English name of the book is...Monster Peach?   I always wanted to live inside of a peach.  I still do.

Peach is the perfect fruit.  It's soft and fuzzy on the outside like a caterpillar.  I think it's the happiest fruit of all.  I wouldn't mind to be a peach someday.  

It is summer in Los Angeles and there are peaches, nectarines and apricots at the farmers market by my apartment.  I buy big bags full of them.  Once i ran out of farmers market peaches and I bought some peaches at the super market store. But these peaches were terrible...they looked very handsome but inside was sandy, like eating a bite of the desert.  They weren't sweet or juicy like my friends from the farmers market.   

I felt terrible for those super market peaches....sitting all grouped together, trying to look their best, but knowing that they would never make anybody happy.  I think the American supermarket is bad for peaches, pressuring them to look round and smooth and perfect, but not putting any value on what is inside.  Those peaches look lovely, but they have very low self-esteem.  

Maybe this is just in Los Angeles. 

I would like to save those peaches if I could, but I'm not sure how....like that other book...ライ麦畑でつかまえて。。。(Catcher in a field of rye?)  where they catch the kids before they become adults....I want to be the Catcher in the peach field...saving these peaches from going to the supermarket...when they are too young to know　any better.

それじゃ

白桃かってこようと。

Hello! It's me Ken Tanaka

Hello Everyone. This is my first post in this blog.
I haven't been making videos lately because I was traveling to El Salvador. I will have a video about it soon. I got back last week and then got busy getting ready for a new art gallery show by Cafemode. The show is at Shojin in the Little Tokyo part of Los Angeles. They were nice enough to have me as the featured artist this time. I will have about 40 pieces in this show. Other participating artists are my friend Remi February (She is very handsome), Mari (from the Ken Tanaka meets a Japanese Dominatrix video) and curator Kio Griffith.

The show will be going on till September 16th so if you are in Los Angeles or will be visiting , I hope you can stop by.

The opening of the show was last night and it was very nice. Many of my friends and youtube viewers came and I was very happy.

Now that the show is up, it's time for me to go back to my search for Jonathan and Linda Smith. Maybe they will find this blog some how.