About Town: Reading Room Displays Art By Rye Renaissance Man

He has come a long way from his hometown of Okido in his native Japan, and his early pre-med studies at the Keio Gijuku School of Medicine in Tokyo. But almost every step of the way, Yukio Ishizuka,  MD, a Rye resident for nearly four decades, has refused to allow life to paint him into a corner, no matter where he is on his globetrotting journey to whereever.

That odyssey has taken him from Harvard to MIT and from Paris to Philadelphia and to Wall St. to an ongoing family art exhibit at the Rye Free Reading Room.

In the midst of that exhibit, Ishizuka took time out to tell Patch that wherever he goes, wherever he has been, his painting has been a mainstay in his life as a doctor, psychiatrist, hedge fund manager, acquisitions specialist, writer and more.

He has communicated that love of painting to his family with his children following in his brush steps, even as they have gone on to careers of their own.

He sketched that journey for Patch during a recent library interview. The different stages of his life emerged like chapters in a book.

When the realities of U.S. medical training in Philadelphia, psychiatric training at Harvard, and his psychotherapy practice afterwards left him thinking about a career change, he ventured into business studies and a think tank at MIT, Ishizuka recalled.

He continued painting in his down time as he went on to become a venture capitalist, a specialist in mergers and acquisitions for a major investment company. He moved on to do more of the same for Mitsubushi after meeting the company’s president. That meeting stirred memories of his boyhood in Japan, before he left for his studies in the U.S. in 1965.

He has traveled widely ever since, and met his future wife, Colette, a hotelier, in Paris.

When they married and decided to start a family, they moved to Rye. That was 36 years ago. He reestablished his psychiatric practice, utilizing, among other things, his business experience to establish a pattern of daily accountability in his patients.

Ishizuka has his patients chart their daily activities with an eye on their personal bottom line, recovery and the positive things they are doing to make it happen in a process he calls “lifetracking.”

Throughout his studies, his medical and business practices, his return to psychotherapy and his marriage and raising his family, there was, and still is, one constant.

He paints in his off hours. With a passion. And with a talent that led his professors at leading Philadelphia and Boston art institutes and museums to ask him to consider abandoning medicine to concentrate on becoming an artist full-time.

But as much as Ishizuka loves painting, he also loves medicine, business and mental challenges and being with his family.

“Painting was and is a passion, a love of my life, but it was remains a distraction from the medical, business, patient and familial challenges,” hesaid. “But painting is still very  much a big part of my life. And my family’s life.”

The results, along with art by his now adult children, are now on display at the Rye Free Reading Room. Ken Gerard, 42, is in the food and sporting goods industries and Nathalie, 32, is a writer and mother of two. She is living in Brussels where her husband works with the European Union.

As Ishizuka spoke with me, his glance roamed the library art gallery, taking in the trio’s approximately 100 paintings, prints and watercolors on display. They depicted scenes varying from “Apple Harvest” to “Women in Veils.”

They captured scenes from places ranging Italy to Cambodia to Thailand, Spain to Hungary to the Caribbean, France to Greece to Portugal. And from blueberries, peaches and pears to grape leaves, tomatoes and cows. And from bullfighters to samurai, student protesters to the Virgin Mary.

Without saying a word, the prints, paintings and watercolors recreate memories, emotions distilled with a brush so that the library walls are filled with precious moments that recall: the band playing outside the Florian Hotel in Venice’s San Marco Square, the Buddhist monk at Angkor Thom, the Holy Men of Amalfi, the dancers in Siem Reap, Prague’s Golden Lane, the ruins at Pompei and the Piazza at Rome’s Pantheon

And closer to home, the lighthouse at Argonquin, Maine, a backyard in Amherst, Central Park, and, really close, sunsets, low tide, the boat house and swans at Manursing Island.

Rye and proximity to New York City has helped shape the Ishizukas as artists. Ishizuka, for example, has exhibited his work at Salmagundi. Ken is a product of Rye’s Church of the Resurrection Grammar School, Rye Country Day School, the Rye Arts Center and NYU. Nathalie, self-taught as an artist, went to Resurrection, Sacred Heart, UMass and Tufts, has an MBA and writes for a mental health foundation as well as authors books for children. Both have achieved success in their chosen fields, and share their father’s lifelong interest in painting.

“But in all our years in Rye, we’ve never had an exhibit here before,” said Ishizuka, shaking his head incredulously. “My wife suggested the RFRR exhibition and made it happen. She has that early hotel experience working as assistant to the general manager at the Hotel Meurice in Paris. She knows how to get things done. She said we should have a family art exhibit at the Rye Library. She made it happen. And here we are.”