Takakazu Yamada

Takakazu Yamada is a Japanese artist and style painter. Born in 1957 in Nagoya in Japan, Yamada studied Japanese traditional-painting techniques at the Aichi Prefectural University of the Arts.

 

He uses traditional Japanese thick paper and colors made out of crushed stones and sand, although he occasionally uses a chemically-made color if this is the only way of obtaining a particular shade.

 

He visited Cambodia for the first time as a painter in 1994. The purpose was a sketch trip to make drawings of Angkor Wat. However, when he came to see the magnificent nature of the wonderful Angkor archipelago, he was stunned by the kindness of Cambodians and found himself fascinated by their smiles.

 

After this first trip, he has been coming back every year and in 2008, he became a guest professor at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh. He eventually opened the Yamada School of Art and focused on developing young Cambodian artists. Nowadays, he teaches painting to many students and shares his time between Japan and Cambodia.