Biography
Jennifer Lane is a Dublin-born printmaker whose principal medium has been woodblock since the 1970s, with the addition of mokuhanga (Japanese water-based woodblock printing) within Graphic Studio Dublin's 60th-anniversary mokuhanga cycle in 2020-21. She studied at the Dun Laoghaire School of Art and Design in the early 1970s, joined Graphic Studio Dublin shortly after, and worked initially in lithography before specialising in woodblock — a speciality she has maintained for more than four decades.
Her first solo exhibition was held at the Abbey Theatre in 1978. International exhibitions include the 1984 Bradford International Print Biennale, the 1993 Print Biennale in Ljubljana (where she was one of five artists representing Ireland), and group exhibitions in Milwaukee, Beijing, Singapore, Yokohama, Brussels, and Paris. Her solo exhibition at Graphic Studio Gallery (2001) presented a representative survey of her woodblock practice, and she has shown at the Royal Hibernian Academy annual exhibitions in 2006, 2009, 2012, 2015, and 2016.
The critic Aidan Dunne characterised Lane's woodcuts as 'land- and townscapes' that exploit 'the natural grain of the wood in elemental images of land, trees and skies' — a description that captures the formal economy of her practice. Working primarily in single-block monochrome and multi-block colour woodcuts, with occasional carborundum, drypoint, and mokuhanga, she has built up a coherent body of work concerned with Irish landscape — coastal headlands, woods, sequoias, and the night sky — and architectural detail (Trinity College, Dublin commissioned a multicolour woodblock print from her in 2019).
Lane's mokuhanga 'Beryx with Moon and Stars' (2020, 34 × 26 cm, edition of 10) was selected for the Kanreki exhibition mounted by Graphic Studio Dublin to mark its 60th anniversary, shown at The Model, Sligo (2020) and at Graphic Studio Gallery, Dublin (April 2021), and travelling to the 2021 International Mokuhanga Conference satellite event at Nara Prefectural Cultural Hall in November-December 2021. The Kanreki cohort organised around the colour red placed her alongside other senior Graphic Studio printmakers (Robert Russell, Geraldine O'Reilly, Kate MacDonagh) and Japan-based invitees (Yoko Akino, Katsutoshi Yuasa, Paul Furneaux).
Her woodcuts figure in many large public, corporate, and private collections, including the Office of Public Works, the Irish Management Institute, the Bank of Ireland, the Jurys Hotels group, and Trinity College Dublin. The Graphic Studio Dublin artist page currently lists more than eighty works across woodcut, woodblock, mokuhanga, carborundum, drypoint, and lithograph, ranging in scale from 12 × 13 cm to 60 × 90 cm.
The slug 'jennifer-lane-mokuhanga' isolates the mokuhanga component of her practice for the Hanga roster; her broader output across woodblock, woodcut, and lithograph extends across decades and represents one of the most sustained Irish woodblock practices of the post-1970s generation.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇮🇪Ireland
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Subjects
- Moonlight
- Works Indexed
- 1
Frequently Asked Questions
Jennifer Lane is a Dublin-born printmaker whose principal medium has been woodblock since the 1970s, with the addition of mokuhanga (Japanese water-based woodblock printing) within Graphic Studio Dublin's 60th-anniversary mokuhanga cycle in 2020-21. She studied at the Dun Laoghaire School of Art and Design in the early 1970s, joined Graphic Studio Dublin shortly after, and worked initially in lithography before specialising in woodblock — a speciality she has maintained for more than four decades.
Jennifer Lane'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.
Jennifer Lane's prints frequently feature moonlight.