Back in January 2020, I came across artwork by Oogonbair. Oogon, for short, is from Inner Mongolia. His mother was a Mongolian language teacher and an art teacher. Her worldview surely shaped his. He’s now a painter studying in Kobe, Japan, beautifully refining an illustrative style of painting that evokes the precision of Mongol zurag, a flatness that contrasts with rich texture, and ethereal color palettes that remind me of the atmosphere of ukiyo-e scenes. He grew up on the Mongolian steppe of China’s Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, but in his work, I see the steppe and the faces I know from here.

He moves easily between worlds of fantasy, memory, and realism. He captures animals and children in a particularly magical way. I was especially taken by his paintings of Mongolian children in nomadic scenes, playing on the steppe, tending to baby animals, standing proudly by their horses. I inquired about purchasing one of his paintings, “Prince of Winter”. It had already been sold, he has a solid base of collectors, but I was offered the opportunity to purchase a commissioned work.  

With the chance to have a commissioned work, I wanted one of Terra, Basar (our Tibetan Mastiff), and Squid (the horse I had to say goodbye to when I moved to Mongolia). Arrangements were made through his gallery in Osaka, Galerie Moustache. I sent Oogon some reference photos of all three of them, and two months later he had created this beautiful image, “Born on Earth from Love”.

Last February, Oogonbair went home to his banner in Inner Mongolia for the Lunar New Year, an important time for being with family, and got stuck there for almost a year because of Japan’s COVID-19 travel restrictions. He’s finally back in his Kobe home and studio. I just got that news this week. I’m happy for him. Mail from Japan to Mongolia is still prohibitively expensive without flights and normal logistics operating normally, so it’ll still be a while before I’ll have the painting shipped to Mongolia. What would be even better would be picking it from Oogon in Ulaanbaatar. He had a solo scheduled in UB this past summer, canceled due to COVID-19. I hope, with Asia seeming to have a better handle on this pandemic situation, that we won’t have to wait as long for a return to things like safe travel and art shows, but it’s anyone’s guess. Until then, this painting is worth the wait.

While everyone is adjusting to #CoronaLife, that's been life in Mongolia since mid-January. A week after our family came home from an amazing trip to the U.S. to spend Christmas with my parents and the week after New Year's with my best friend, the outbreak in China had exploded and Mongolia was on high alert, deathly afraid of the novel coronavirus crossing the border. Schools closed and "quarantine" began. Every day since has been varying degrees of anxiety about what ifs. I'm one of the lucky ones who has always worked remotely and, for the most part, work hasn't changed much for me, but life at home is something else.

So, while this isn't involuntary free time for me, with all the thoughts spinning in my head, I figured it was time to finally launch my website.

I'll be archiving past writing that's currently floating around on the internet and sharing new writing, but mostly trying to consolidate the traces of me online. We'll see how it goes...