Biography
Elizabeth Forrest is a Canadian mokuhanga artist based in Waterloo, Ontario, having relocated there from Toronto, whose sustained engagement with water-based Japanese woodblock printing has made her a consistent presence in the medium's international community. She first went to Japan to study the technique as a research student in Japanese woodblock printing at Kyoto Seika University in 1988–89, and has concentrated on mokuhanga in her practice since the late 1990s. In 2012 she self-published an instructional book, 'Mokuhanga: A Beginner's Manual,' and has taught the medium in numerous workshops.
Forrest's work has been selected for the juried exhibitions of successive International Mokuhanga Conferences over more than a decade. Her prints appeared in the 'Dialogue and Dialect' juried exhibition at the inaugural conference in Kyoto in 2011, in the Tokyo conference exhibition of 2014 — where she received an Honourable Mention Prize — and in the 2017 exhibition in Honolulu, Hawaii, where her work earned a Purchase Award and entered the collection of the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts.
Most recently, her work was selected for the 2024 International Mokuhanga Conference exhibition in Echizen, in Fukui Prefecture — a region that is one of Japan's most important centers for washi papermaking, with a tradition extending back many centuries. For printmakers who work with washi daily, the conference's setting offered a direct connection to the place where their paper is made. Her Echizen entry, 'Retrospection,' combined mokuhanga with stencil work on kozo paper and was shown within the exhibition's Americas section, reflecting the growth of mokuhanga practice across the Western Hemisphere since the first conference in 2011.
Forrest's long involvement across successive conference cycles places her among the experienced practitioners whose continued participation lends continuity and depth to the international mokuhanga community, and her work adds the distinctive vocabulary of water-based woodblock printing to the Canadian printmaking scene.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇺🇸United States
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Subjects
- Moonlight
- Works Indexed
- 3
Frequently Asked Questions
Elizabeth Forrest is a Canadian mokuhanga artist based in Waterloo, Ontario, having relocated there from Toronto, whose sustained engagement with water-based Japanese woodblock printing has made her a consistent presence in the medium's international community. She first went to Japan to study the technique as a research student in Japanese woodblock printing at Kyoto Seika University in 1988–89, and has concentrated on mokuhanga in her practice since the late 1990s. In 2012 she self-published an instructional book, 'Mokuhanga: A Beginner's Manual,' and has taught the medium in numerous workshops.
Elizabeth Forrest'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.
Elizabeth Forrest's prints frequently feature moonlight.
