Sakura

"Sakura" presents the cherry blossoms in full bloom — Japan's most celebrated natural spectacle and perhaps the most painted subject in all of Japanese art — through Okuyama's personal sosaku-hanga vision. Where the great tradition of sakura imagery stretched from Heian court poetry to Hiroshige's woodblock prints, Okuyama's version would have asserted his individual observation against this accumulated tradition: a specific tree, at a specific time of day, under specific conditions of light and wind. The sakura subject demanded both homage to tradition and the personal freshness that sosaku-hanga required.