ANNA BRENNA

The ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world) is a genre of art which flourished in Japan from the 17th through 19th centuries, during the Edo period. Its artists produced woodblock prints on paper and paintings.

The term Ukiyo-e indicated a sense of fugacity from attachment to material and everyday things, which the wisemen should and would escape from.

Ukiyo-es were inexpensive as they were a mass production and were created mainly for city inhabitants who couldn’t allow to buy real paintings. Originally main subject of Ukiyo-es was life in the cities, afterwards also travel scenes and pictures of nature and landscapes became popular.

Simple lines, soft colours, almost absent  perspective and minimalism have the objective to represent a continuously mutating, impermanent world, meant to esthetically depict the precepts of the Zen philosophy: pursue happiness here and now.

With my pictures I have tried to re-create a modern version of Ukiyo-e, depicting everyday life and common people, nature becoming poetry, fleeting reality of the moment.