Sheana and Steve Eccles are a persuasive couple.

Not only have the husband and wife team, who run Bohemia Galleries in York, managed to secure an exhibition by one of America's top rated artists, but they have also managed to convince that notoriously shy artist to come to York to see the celebration of his work and meet fans.

Milt Kobayashi is renowned in his home country.

The National Academy of Design Ranger Award and the Silver Medal from the Allied Arts Show in New York are just two of the accolades he has received, while his work has been celebrated in publications like Forbes and Fortune.

While Kobayashi is well- respected and widely known in the States, Sheana and Steve Eccles wanted his reputation to be extended to these shores.

The couple have travelled regularly across the Atlantic over the past decade, meeting artists and forging relationships with those whose work they admire.

Steve Eccles says that choosing artists is a very instinctive process – he knows almost immediately when he sees someone's work if he wants to bring it to Yorkshire.

In recent years, the small independent gallery on Gillygate in York has been attracting bigger and more impressive names, particularly from America,
as well as working with some of Britain's most popular artists – both Mackenzie Thorpe and Jack Vettriano have shown their work at
the gallery.

Attracting an artist of the stature of Kobayashi is a coup for the couple, pulled off thanks to their building a relationship with him.

Kobayashi's figurative paintings have been compared with artists including Degas and Lautrec and have proved constantly popular with American audiences – and equally
so in York.

Steve Eccles said: "We've wanted to bring Milt's work to York for a long time, ever since we met him. When I saw his work I just knew it was the sort of thing that would be popular."

Eccles was proved right when seven of the artist's pieces were sold before the official opening of the exhibition last week.

Kobayashi is a third generation Japanese American and he says his background holds the key to his work.

Having studied in California and found work as an illustrator, he felt creatively unfulfilled and moved to New York where he came across the work of 17th century Spanish master Velázquez at the city's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It was this "discovery" of Velázquez – and a pragmatic head – that convinced him to take his art more seriously.

"I was always painting as a kid – it was all I could do. I hadn't thought about it as a career too much but when I was out of college, well, I didn't want to starve, so I decided I would paint for a living," says Kobayashi.

The idea of "painting for a living" left the artist unfulfilled and it was only when began sharing in the great art at the MMA that he understood his calling.

Whistler, Sargent and Chase have had a great influence on his work, but
he also became aware of Japanese art and "the Japanese floating world
of Edo".

He began studying the 16th and 17th century Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock print masters Hokasai, Sharaku and Utamaro. Ukiyo-e is defined as "pictures of the floating world" depicting characters in the constantly changing motions
of life.

The whole perspective of Japanese art allures him – the patterns, colour harmonies, use of negative space, composition and design.

Studying the art of his ancestors' country gave him a greater impetus to find his own style.

"I cannot paint from live models. I do most of my work after midnight.

"I do some sketching, but most of my ideas are worked out on canvas in real time," he says.

"I cannot paint every day. I will do the worst art and it will get stale."

Applying these influences to the creation of his own work has paid dividends.

Sheana and Steve Eccles are not the only British fans of his work – Evening Standard art critic Godfrey Barker was particularly impressed when he came across Kobayashi.

He wrote: "Kobayashi's compositions are wicked in their composition, wicked in their skilful calculation and wickedly clever in their balance. In short, we are looking at an unusually professional and well-sourced artist, cultivated in a manner uncommon in the desert of Disney that is modern America. He's apart from his age and we need to see more of him."

Which lucky Yorkshire art lovers can now do.

Milt Kobayashi's work is at Bohemia Galleries, Gillygate, York to Oct 17.