Biography
Cameron Bailey is an American mokuhanga printmaker based in Queens, New York, who creates evocative landscapes through water-based woodblock printing, merging influences from German Romanticism, American Tonalism, and Japanese shin-hanga aesthetics into a contemporary practice distinguished by its atmospheric depth and luminous color.
Bailey studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art from 2009 to 2013, followed by training at The Teaching Studio of Art in Oyster Bay, New York in 2014, and the Manhattan Graphic Center in 2017. He began printmaking in 2016, and his commitment to mokuhanga was immediate and total. Working primarily in a multi-layer reduction technique using traditional Japanese printmaking tools and materials, Bailey builds his images through successive layers of transparent watercolor pigment pressed into washi paper with a baren, achieving a tonal richness that evokes the misty atmospheres of shin-hanga masters while remaining unmistakably contemporary.
His prints depict landscapes that hover between specific places and states of mind -- mountain peaks emerging from fog, storms gathering over water, moonlight filtering through atmospheric haze. Works such as "Tempest" (2025), a sixteen-color reduction mokuhanga on Awagami Hanga Pro washi, demonstrate his technical ambition, while titles like "Holy Mountain," "Rainsquall," and "Cold Moon" reveal his romantic sensibility. The tension between technical precision and atmospheric mystery gives his landscapes their distinctive power.
Bailey has exhibited extensively and received significant recognition in a relatively short career. In 2025, he received the In Memory of Ruth Leaf Award and the Arthur Harless Memorial Award from the Society of American Graphic Artists. In 2024, he won the Fukui Washi Industry Cooperative Association Prize and the Conservation Framing Award, and participated in the International Mokuhanga Conference 2024 "Inheritance and Innovation" juried exhibition in Echizen City, Japan. His work has been displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2022, 2024), the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair in London (2020, 2022), and numerous national juried exhibitions. He is a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists and the California Society of Printmakers, and his work is featured in Carol Wilhide Justin's book "Japanese Woodcut: Traditional Techniques and Contemporary Practice."
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇺🇸United States
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 4
Frequently Asked Questions
Cameron Bailey is an American mokuhanga printmaker based in Queens, New York, who creates evocative landscapes through water-based woodblock printing, merging influences from German Romanticism, American Tonalism, and Japanese shin-hanga aesthetics into a contemporary practice distinguished by its atmospheric depth and luminous color.
Cameron Bailey's work was shaped by the Contemporary Mokuhanga tradition in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Contemporary Mokuhanga: Contemporary mokuhanga (literally "wood-block print") encompasses artists working from approximately 1970 to the present who continue or reinvent traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques.
Cameron Bailey is a contemporary printmaker whose work has been acquired by museum collections, confirming institutional recognition. Museum representation supports collector confidence. Prices range from $200 for smaller works to $5,000 for major compositions. Most prints sell in the $500–$2,000 range. Museum-collected contemporary printmakers represent a strong value proposition, as institutional validation often precedes market appreciation.
