About the Artist

I’ve always seen painting and composition in whichever medium I’m working in, and have done all my own composing, whether in my commercial photography or on the canvas, as this is how I bring my design sensibility to any image.

Brian Hagiwara was born in 1943, in Roher, Arkansas. After the war, his family returned to Los Angeles where he grew up and attended UCLA, earning an MFA in Painting and Photography. After graduate school, he began his career as a painter and illustrator for the music industry in Los Angeles. Gradually, as photography became more prominent, Brian used it as the primary medium for his album covers. As part of a wave of American photographers in the mid-70’s (whose work later became collectively known as the ‘The New Color Photography’), his photographs, Polaroid SX 70’s and Cibachrome prints—two of the newest art media of the day—were shown in Boston, New York, Berlin and Paris. Soon after, he relocated to New York, settling in lower SoHo, where he continued his work with the music industry, as well as contributing to the creative New York magazine community of the early ’80’s.

A highly respected art director of the era, after reviewing Hagiwara’s portfolio, had the vision (controversial at the time!), of using rock and roll photographers to shoot food still lives for her magazine, ‘The Connoisseur’. This signaled the beginning of Brian’s still-life and food photography period, that stretched for years, from fine arts publishing to mainstream commercial clients. He drew on his MFA to create photographic imagery referencing periods as varied as Dutch Still Life, Pop Art, Surrealism and Dadaism.

My favorite still life subjects were those that I could play around with, the ones that needed to be stacked, splashed, or smushed. Then the process became very tactile, which would always bring it back to painting for me.

He returned to painting in 2010 as a natural outgrowth of his extensive creative experience. In 2015, Brian and his partner of twenty-five years, Bret Baughman, moved to Palm Springs to continue his painting. Working primarily in oils, his work covers a broad scope of styles, creating elegant and evocative imagery that draws inspiration from the abstract expressionist, neo-expressionist and minimalist movements.

He is represented in Palm Springs by Colin Fisher Studios.