Key value factors: For living or recently deceased artists, limited edition size and gallery representation drive value. Signed and numbered prints from smaller editions are most desirable.
One of Oda's Heart Sutra compositions — pairing the central text of Mahayana Buddhism with a specific animal companion, here the sea turtle (umi-game). The Heart Sutra's declaration that "form is emptiness, emptiness is form" resonates with Oda's artistic practice of finding the sacred within the physical and the physical within the sacred — the turtle's ancient body, unchanged over two hundred million years, is itself a form of emptiness made manifest, a living demonstration of the sutra's teaching. The sea turtle's endangered status also gives this composition an ecological dimension: the protection of ancient living forms becomes a spiritual practice, an act of compassion toward the creatures that carry the deep time of the ocean in their shells.
Kamakura Daibutsu
1930
Color woodblock print
1950
Color woodblock print
大仏
Woodblock print
1926
Color woodblock print; oban
Heart Sutra with Sea Turtle (42/50) was created by Mayumi Oda (小田真由美).
Heart Sutra with Sea Turtle (42/50) depicts religious, seascapes, and animals.
