Anna Oneglia: Humboldt's Traveling Artist 

"Humboldt's weather is great for making art," says Arcata artist Anna Oneglia. "I love rain and even fog makes for good long studio days." 

As she spoke via Zoom, Oneglia was sitting on a porch, iridescent green fronds swaying behind her under an ironically blue, cloudless sky. She was house sitting in Hawaii, far from her home in the foggy Arcata Bottoms. But it turns out that trading her services, applying for residencies in foreign countries and house sitting are all strategies she uses to help her thrive as a painter and printmaker.

Having grown up in New York City, Oneglia began traveling at 19, living in Europe and painting and cooking to earn an income. "It was much easier back then! My rent in Greece was only $15 a month." Her first husband, a Dutchman whom she met while living in Amsterdam, wanted to live in the U.S., so they moved to Trinidad in 1975, and she's lived in Humboldt off and on ever since.

Oneglia's art embraces many forms: oil painting on canvas, mixed media on paper, drawings and block prints. Her current favorite is oils. "Painting has flow and is not fixed, can keep changing and be continually reimagined and reinterpreted," she says. "I tend to work in series, with one idea leading to another, and on many paintings at the same time, as each has its own pace and progression." She paints in a variety of sizes because small pieces are quicker to complete and can offer comic relief, allowing for more intuitition and spontaneity. "I can move between pieces if I'm stuck or uncertain about what to do next," she adds.

Her art is saturated with deep color, whether it's a dancing version of the Hindu god Ganesha, or a woman in a sari riding a bicycle. Bicycles are a recurring theme in her work, as are the ocean, nature, sacred female imagery across spiritual lineages, musicians and motifs from her varied travels, especially from Asia. Sometimes she blends several interests together, such as her series of large paintings of gods and goddesses riding bicycles, a form of transit that was disappearing in India when she began spending winters there in 2009. Whimsically, they're all holding cell phones. Her work can be seen in the newly remodeled Food for People's pantry, at the Redwood Community Health Center on Buhne Street, at the Arcata Artisans gallery on the plaza and on her website, annaoneglia.com.

Oneglia draws every day, filling her sketchbook with images of places, friends and whatever interests her, whether at the Arcata Farmers Market or in Fujiyoshida, a town at the base of Mt. Fuji, where she spent the month of April on an artist's residency. Every day there, she created a daily mixed media painting on paper, each one including the mountain, which looms large over the town. She's now mounting the 32 paintings onto panels with different decorative Japanese papers.

Her drawings become starting points for paintings. In her studio she combines and transfers images to the canvas with brush and oil paint, adding collaged bits of gold leaf, paper and stamps collected on her travels. 

She also has a series of block prints, carved in wood or linoleum and hand colored, with a quotation within the design. Different mediums, she says, use distinct parts of the brain. "Painting is spontaneous. I can paint, then wipe it away if I want. With block printing, I can't get back what's been carved away. I have to think in reverse and plan ahead what I'll print or how I'll use negative space."

Because Oneglia believes art should be accessible to everyone, the quote prints are also available as postcards.

One print, "No Mud, No Lotus," a quote from the late Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thích Naht Hanh, is shown with a hand holding a lotus flower. She created this for the friends and patrons who helped raise funds for her to go to India one year to attend a teaching by the Dalai Lama. Oneglia has been a Buddhist most of her adult life, beginning her meditation practice at Plum Village, Thich Naht Hanh's retreat center in southern France.

Over the years she has had to figure out how to do just enough of the business side to allow her to spend most of her time creating. Making art as a living "has often been challenging, has a long learning curve and is probably very impractical, but somehow it's worked," she says. In the early '80s, she had a small business delivering pastries to cafes in Arcata and she's also cooked for painting and meditation retreats. She kept the sideline work to a minimum because she needs the quiet time to make things. "It's how I stay grounded in the world." 

Hoping to make a better living from art, she moved to Santa Cruz in 1985, where she participated in Open Studios for the first time. "It taught me so much about showing and selling art and dealing with the public. Some people think you're a goddess, others give you backhanded insults. You just learn to ride with the comments." 

She returned to Humboldt in 2015, after Santa Cruz grew too crowded and expensive. She bought a house, built a studio with her son's help, joined Arcata Artisans, and donated art to nonprofits and fundraisers to give back. A fan of the North Coast Open Studios, she participates most years.

Oneglia travels a couple months of the year but she loves returning to her studio. The beauty of the North Coast inspires her, as well as the general spaciousness, lack of traffic and, as a lifelong cyclist, the bike-friendliness. "I love that this part of California has changed the least of any place I've known in the 50 years I've lived in the state."

Louisa Rogers (she/her) is a writer, painter and paddleboarder who lives in Eureka and Guanajuato, Mexico.