Sumi-e itself is more than a painting style. It takes many years to learn and requires extreme discipline and peacefulness. As a youth, Obata learned to sit erect, and practice his brushwork while not allowing his elbows to touch the table. He learned the three basic brush strokes; first the vertical line which in the mind-set of Sumi-e connects the Earth and the sky; then the horizontal line connecting east and west, the past, the present, and the future; last of all the circle which represents motion, without beginning or end. Obata learned to come close to his nature subjects in mind and deed. He would study them by not only looking at them but by touching them, smelling them, and coming to understand them.
Obata learned from many masters. Born Sato Zoroku, he was adopted by his artist brother Rokuichi and was given the name Obata Zoroku. He went on to study art under Chikuson Moniwa, Terasaki Kogyo, Hashimoto Gaho, and Murata Tanryo who renamed him Chiura meaning "a thousand bays." As an adolescent, Obata assisted Murata Tanryo in painting screens for the Konpira Temple on Shikoku Island. These sixty screens are now valued among Japan’s national treasures.
It was in 1903 that Obata departed the country of his birth for California. He was only seventeen years old then, but ready to begin the adventure that became his extraordinary career and life.
Forsaking art school in San Francisco because his fellow students did not seem serious enough, he instead spent as much time with nature as possible. Even in the midst of the tragedy of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, he remained positive and helped set up camp in Lafayette Park for the many suddenly homeless survivors. He spent many hours sketching the devastation all the while knowing that life and nature would endure beyond the destruction. He completed sixty watercolors and drawings that illustrated the tragedy.
He loved to draw and paint scenes from the seaside and later on from Yosemite where he completed seventy sketches and paintings during his two-month visit in 1927. Over time he became established as a professional artist and developed his own techniques for painting much of the California landscape so different from Japan.
He worked always to bring differing cultures together despite prejudice against Japanese immigrants. In 1932, he began to teach at the University of California in Berkeley. His students learned not only painting, but about the art and ingenuity involved in mixing paints from items found throughout nature to brushes made from animal fur and water carried home from the mountain streams of Yosemite. His students learned to value and respect nature as well as one another, for Obata’s peacefulness inundated his teaching. He took time with his students to share stories from his own childhood and culture.
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