TORONTO.- On view at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) beginning July 17, 2025, Naoko Matsubara is a career-spanning exhibition of exuberant woodcut prints by the celebrated Japanese-Canadian artist. Demonstrating her innovative handling of the medium, her vibrant prints explore nature and human connection, portraying hands at work, bodies in motion and colourful abstractions.

On view on Level 1, Naoko Matsubara is curated by Renée van der Avoird, Associate Curator of Canadian Art, AGO. The exhibition features 20 woodcut prints made over the last six decades and is accompanied by a nine-minute documentary film, highlighting the artist in her studio and in her garden, produced by Puncture and the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre in partnership with the AGO and Abbozzo Gallery.

For more than six decades, woodblock printmaking has been at the core of Matsubara’s artistic practice. The oldest form of printmaking, woodblock printing is a relief print technique in which images, designs, or words are carved in reverse onto a block of wood. Applying oil-based inks onto a wooden carving, Matsubara then prints her images onto handmade Japanese and Korean paper.

“I have pursued design in its many forms,” says Matsubara, “be it through painting, lithography, etching, and silkscreen, but it’s wood that I’m drawn too, it is the raw material of my art. I like cutting without restrictive design, like an expanding rhythm. For the past 70 years, I have been fascinated by trees and the properties of wood grain – the way it reveals itself in my images and the surprise I get each time I cut.”

Bookended by two career-spanning self-portraits—one from 1966 (age 29); and the other from 2024 (age 87), the exhibition highlights Matsubara’s own artistic evolution from figurative portraits to abstract collage. Throughout, her enduring appreciation for beauty and interesting forms shines – be it in the outline of a tree, a bustling factory, or the interplay of colour and texture.

Anchoring the exhibition is Tagasode (2014), a monumental 2-meter single-sheet print, recalling an ikō – a piece of furniture on which a kimono hangs. Animated with incisions and wood grain, the image is a celebration of complementary colours. Created with 17 hand-carved wood blocks and printed on Korean handmade paper, Tagasode is a testament to her accomplished handling of the woodcut medium.

Also on display are eight woodcut prints from her series In Praise of Hands (1973-2020). Inspired by way her son Yoshiki used his hands to communicate as an infant, Matsubara captures the creative potential of the human hand – making music, making art, healing, or in prayer.

“Matsubara’s art is a celebration of all that is alive, reverently rendered,” says Renée van der Avoird, Associate Curator of Canadian Art, AGO. “She pushes the boundaries of the medium and her approach is as organic as her subject matter – she incorporates the grain of the wood she carves on, the textural details of the handmade paper on which she prints, and joyful colours that overlap and combine.”

Naoko Matsubara is a distinguished Japanese-Canadian woodcut print artist based in Oakville, Ontario. She was born in 1937 on Shikoku Island into a Shinto family and grew up in Kyoto. She completed a BFA at the Kyoto Academy of Fine Art in 1960 and was a Fulbright Scholar at what is now Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, where she completed her MFA in 1962. Matsubara was a Special Invited Student at the Royal College of Art in London that same year. After travelling extensively in Europe and Asia, the artist returned to Japan for two years, before returning to the United States. There she worked as assistant to the German American professor, publisher and illustrator Fritz Eichenberg, and also taught at the Pratt Institute of Graphic Art in New York, as well as at the University of Rhode Island.

Since 1960, Matsubara has had more than 75 solo exhibitions, in the USA, Canada, Japan, England, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Holland and Mexico. She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions. Her work is held in major public institutions worldwide such as the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, USA; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Detroit Institute of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Buffalo AKG Art Museum; the British Museum in London; the Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art; among many others. Matsubara is represented by Abbozzo Gallery in Toronto.

Naoko Matsubara is organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario.