Blue sky

This print likely takes an open expanse of sky as its primary subject, a compositional choice that recalls the atmospheric studies of late ukiyo-e landscape masters while operating within Oda's modernist sensibility. A mokuhanga rendering of sky relies heavily on bokashi — the gradation technique in which pigment is brushed onto the block and pulled across washi by the baren to produce soft transitions of color without visible boundaries. Blue, as a pigment in Japanese printmaking, carries the particular history of imported Prussian blue (bero-ai), whose 1820s arrival transformed the palette of Hokusai and Hiroshige; Oda's use of the color extends that lineage into a contemporary, contemplative register. The choice of sky as subject aligns with the spare, elemental imagery Oda has pursued in her later career, particularly after her move to Hawaii Island and the deepening of her Buddhist practice. Where her early work emphasizes the figural celebration of goddesses, prints like Blue Sky gravitate toward sky, water, and mountain as carriers of the same generative and meditative meaning.