Brendan Reilly

Brendan Reilly is an American mokuhanga printmaker whose work is informed by both Asian art traditions and graphic design. A member of St. Lawrence University's Class of 2020 in Canton, New York -- where he was a religious studies and modern languages double major -- Reilly took up mokuhanga through a course taught by the printmaker Melissa Schulenberg, a professor of art at the university.

Coming to Japanese woodblock printing from outside the studio-art major, Reilly found its technical demands and methodical process well suited to his sensibility for pattern and design. In mokuhanga, clean lines are produced by the cut of a carver's knife into Japanese shina plywood, and colors are transferred from carved blocks to paper through the artist's own arm pressure -- a human printing press using the traditional baren tool. This direct, physical engagement with the process, combined with the precision required for registration and color layering, appealed to him.

His work brings patterned surfaces into compositions that draw on the visual language of both Asian art and contemporary graphic design. This synthesis of Eastern printmaking technique with Western design principles reflects the increasingly cross-cultural nature of mokuhanga practice, in which artists from diverse backgrounds find common ground in the shared materials and methods of water-based woodblock printing.

Reilly's work was shown alongside Schulenberg's in 'Between Worlds -- Mokuhanga,' an exhibition at the Kentler International Drawing Space in Red Hook, Brooklyn, held from June 17 to July 31, 2022. Presented by the Mokuhanga Sisters and Kentler, the show brought together established and emerging mokuhanga artists, and Reilly's inclusion as an emerging artist alongside international practitioners reflected the mokuhanga community's openness to new voices in the field.