Okada was an accomplished artist and teacher in the Western figurative tradition when, in 1950, he left Japan, his homeland, and immigrated to New York. Shortly after settling there, Okada’s artistic style changed from explorations of the figure and European-influenced landscapes to lyrical abstractions that fused Western and Eastern styles. While Japan provided inspiration, America supplied Okada with a new format and materials for representation. Living in the West gave him the freedom to explore and express his feelings about Japan. While he was living in the United States, Okada’s thoughts were still consumed with Japan; his dreams became the inspiration for his abstract paintings.
Footsteps, painted in 1954, represents one of Okada's early forays into this new form of expression. In keeping with the ideas of his fellow abstract expressionists, Okada drew imagery from his subconscious, allowing it to dictate his creative hand. He had no preconceived imagery for a picture, but preferred working in the spirit of Zen Buddhism, which emphasizes meditation. Occasionally he was known to work out the ideas for a composition using natural elements such as sticks, stones, and paper. This process helped him to develop the image before actually beginning his painting.
In Footsteps, the tiny daubs of gray and black paint that lead the viewer's eye into the composition, the broken, black horizontal line in the upper right, and the porous brown triangular shape in the bottom left are evocative of pebbles, rocks, and sticks. Okada's tendency to suggest landscape arises in the faint horizontal shape on the right resembling a mountain or hill, the white amorphous shapes evoking clouds, and the touches of gray in the center resembling footprints in the snow—a fleeting suggestion for the title of this painting. The geometric shapes clustered on the left of the canvas, suggest houses, windows, and roofs, implying human presence in harmony with nature. Okada revealed his Asian heritage through the calm simplicity of the composition, the soft, muted palette, and the subtle allusions to nature. By balancing void against condensed weight, he realized the oriental pictorial tradition of implying vast and ambiguous space.
Okada achieved texture in Footsteps by scraping back paint, painting wet-into-wet, splattering paint onto a dry surface, and using a dry brush. Drips of paint run in different directions on the composition, suggesting that Okada rotated the canvas as he worked. The painting is built up with thin oil washes; bare ground is exposed in some areas between forms, but most of the canvas is covered with thin glazes. The geometric shapes and the interweaving of lush textures and tones suggest aspects of nature.
Duncan Phillips frequently hung this painting with works by Bradley Walker Tomlin and Mark Rothko in the conviction that Okada shared similar poetic impulses.