RETURNING

Anna Oneglia is a California based painter and printmaker. Her latest work, showing at Tumbleweed Found, stems from trips made to Japan over the last few years. A lover of slow travel, she enjoys returning to the same places, hoping to go deeper and see more. Here, she’s returning to Santa Cruz to show her latest artwork, after a move north.

She is showing several mediums, a mix of pieces made while on 2 artists residencies & also back at home in the studio (another kind of returning). Included are small color woodcuts (made in Echizen last fall), mixed media paintings (made in Fujiyoshida Spring of last year), and oils on canvas done this winter/spring in the studio, based on her travel drawings.

Anna’s artworks begin with these drawings, done daily in her always carried sketchbooks. Three will be on display at the gallery. Drawing, both at home & elsewhere, helps her to look and remember. The artists’ residencies – one at the foot of Mt Fuji & one in a small paper making village – gave time & space to draw and make easily carried works on paper. Upon returning to the studio, the sketches serve as both inspiration & a prompt, allowing a revisiting of what’s been seen, gathered & experienced, ready to be turned into larger works.

On her last residency she studied Mokuhanga, a traditional Japanese style of woodcut. This way of working uses transparent watercolor to handprint multiple blocks onto thin paper. It’s begun a change of style in her prints, which are of course still evolving.

The oil paintings shown include a few of the great bikes in Kyoto (who knew they have so many amazing ones there?). Also some of the tea sets found in various places she stayed, and a series of workers, which grew from a fascination with the Japanese ability to concentrate on and honor the everyday, the ordinary and the small.