Carol Wilhide Justin

Carol Wilhide Justin is a British artist-printmaker who specialises in Japanese woodcut and teaches the technique widely in London, and whose comprehensive book on the subject has become a valued resource for mokuhanga practitioners. After being awarded a residency at MI-Lab in Fujikawaguchiko, Japan, in 2014 — where she was taught mokuhanga by Japanese sensei — she returned to the UK and earned an MA in Print from the Royal College of Art in London in 2017, bringing together rigorous academic training with hands-on mastery of traditional Japanese printing techniques.

Wilhide Justin draws her imagery from the natural world, translating observed landscapes, botanical subjects, and atmospheric effects into the luminous, translucent medium of mokuhanga. Working with water-based pigments rather than the oil-based inks of Western printmaking, and printing by hand with a baren, she captures the subtle gradations of light and shade — and the mutability of time, movement, and memory — that animate her subjects, rendered with the precision and delicacy that mokuhanga uniquely affords.

Beyond her artistic practice, Wilhide Justin has made a notable contribution to the field through her authorship of "Japanese Woodcut: Traditional Techniques and Contemporary Practice," published by Crowood Press in 2024. The book is a comprehensive guide to mokuhanga that traces the delicate line, luminous color, and inventive composition of the medium — qualities that helped shape European taste and the Impressionists in the nineteenth century — and presents it as a compelling and diverse technique for contemporary printmakers. With over four hundred illustrations, it ranges from materials and tools to advanced printing methods, and features work by contemporary mokuhanga practitioners from around the world, demonstrating the global breadth of current practice.

Wilhide Justin is a member of the Printmakers Council and has exhibited her work internationally. She took part in the International Mokuhanga Conference in Nara in 2021, where she presented a paper on mokuhanga and the sense of touch, and in the 2024 conference in Echizen, Japan, maintaining active engagement with the global community of mokuhanga practitioners. As both an artist and an author-educator, she plays a dual role in sustaining and expanding the practice of Japanese woodblock printing in the Western world.