Misako OBA

“It Is Happening” is the first encaustic piece that I created in 2014 for this series. I have been creating the series related to stars, desert, and our lives since then. That was after experiencing many consecutive unexpected losses. Life seemed unfair. Heartbroken. Disappointed. Grief. However, I was able to heal each time and recover rather quickly and felt at peace and even thankful for what life has to offer. And, I wanted to share my process and journey with you. I overlapped my life with the story of Job in the Bible. He had terrible calamities but was blessed with double for the rest of his life. To be like him, I did the same thing: looked up to the sky and saw the stars and recognized God’s creations and His control. I believe HE watches over our journey and blesses those who have faith in Him. Out Creator can loose the cords of Orion and control from vast nature to the molecule level. So, I tried to talk to God about my situations and emotions, and although it was sometimes against my feelings, I kept praying, trusting, thanking God, and even praising Him in the dry “desert” time. And, it was and it is refreshing to actually go out and look up at the stars in a desert or anywhere. Or viewing art at a gallery in the city actually helped me to rethink, refocus, reframe my vision, life and to contemplate on what really matters.

LINK: My story about Stars and Desert.
LINK: Printmaking artworks in the Stars and Desert series
LINK: Text in My Work and Something about Chagall

 Stars and Desert series is also about light(s) in life as a metaphor as well as about things beyond our control, the Creation, the greatness and the beauty of nature. Our human emotion and the experience are beyond time and space. People today experience, feel, love, and suffer from the same issues as ancient people did.

I create artworks with the same theme (Stars and Desert) with inter-disciplinary medium such as encaustic, mixed media with oil, water cooler or acrylic, and printmaking.  Also, I photographed the scenes and develop my imagination to create paintings. A number of my artworks incorporates text. I am interested in universal emotion and applications beyond time and space. I use Japanese ancient poem collection for other series, and for this Stars and Desert series, my inspiration of text comes from a song or Bible verses as coincidentally Marc Chagall (1887-1985) also did the printmaking on different verses form the Bible. I reflected the verses that related to the stars, desert, Creation and human lives beyond time and space, hoping the audience to ponder or evoke their emotion/ souls. I began creating the Stars and Desert series after moved to Seattle, Washington, having had opportunities to see the real desert and Milky Way in my eyes. This is a on-going series.