Sea

The first in a sequence of "Sea" prints in which Ono returned repeatedly to the same essential subject under varied formal treatments. The bare title suggests a reduced, near-abstract approach — surface, depth, and motion distilled rather than illustrated. Ono's mokuhanga seascapes typically work through layered carving: broad ground tones laid down first, then secondary blocks introducing rhythmic mark-making to suggest swell, current, or reflected light. Woodgrain is exploited rather than concealed, and a baren-pulled finish leaves subtle pressure variations across the washi. The reductive vocabulary aligns Ono with Onchi's abstract experiments of the 1940s and 1950s, but his graphic instincts — sharpened in the high-contrast urban prints of his prewar years — keep the image structurally taut. Even the most abstracted of these seascapes reads as composed image rather than gesture.