Takuro Kamata (1939-) is an artist who worked primarily in traditional Japanese methods of textile design and woodblock prints. Originally from Miyagi prefecture in Japan, Kamata studied economics and got a job in the insurance business. At this time, he also pursued his interest in arts and crafts, and eventually studied woodcut printmaking under Toshi Yoshida. Some of his work was displayed as part of a group show at the Tokyo Museum of Fine Arts in 1969. He later studied lithography in Mexico at the Art Institute of San Miguel Allende, and at the Toledo Museum of Fine Arts in the United States.
In 1970, Kamata immigrated to Canada, first settling in Montreal. It is here that he began to study the traditional Japanese method of paste-resist dying of textiles, norizome. He moved to Toronto in 1975, where he established Kamata Studio and began to focus solely on his textile work. Kamata found there was a lot of interest in Canada at the time in the traditional Japanese methods he used, which enabled him to support himself by selling his work at art festivals and craft shows, and by teaching at various art and design schools in Ontario, Quebec, and even in New Brunswick. From 1972 to 1990, Kamata exhibited his work in both woodcuts and textiles in venues primarily in Ontario, but also Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Ohio in the United States. He received several grants from the Ontario Arts Council throughout the 1980s which enabled him to go back to Japan and continue his largely self-taught study of traditional Japanese methods. He is now retired and living in Toronto.
