Abstraction is a great medium in the hands of an artist like Okamura as he uses it to intensify the feelings he wants to convey from a simple idea like a wave to something that sublimely feels larger.
Wave of Ur is a layered work that conjures up images within nature and a dreamy world where images and nature coalesce. The wave within the painting has an ominous and culminating feeling as there is the suggestion of water and then a frothy cresting a wave like form. And then with some of the extra detailing he throws in we feel he is suggesting other vignettes and evanescent glimpses at something else as well. In this, art mimics nature and in this painting we see why Okamura was a good artist. He draws upon aesthetics found in Japanese art and these are beautifully applied to a style of abstraction being explored in the United States in the 1950’s and early 1960’s.