Cherry blossom time 1946

Koshiro Onchi made this print of cherry blossoms, and a woman, presumably, looking up at them. What I notice first is the way the color and mark-making work together, in a kind of visual dance, to create a mood. There’s a lot of pink here, and it’s a very particular kind of pink. It’s not sugary or sentimental. It’s more like the pink you get when you mix red and white with a little bit of gray, a muted, almost melancholy pink. Look at the woman’s kimono, you can really see how the material texture is built with layering, and it's also a very direct, physical process. I think of other printmakers, like Edvard Munch, who used woodcuts to explore similar themes of nature, emotion, and the human figure. Ultimately, art is a conversation that has no final destination, it’s up to us to find the interesting places where it leads.