Biography
Julie Murphy is a contemporary printmaker based in Northern Ireland whose studio practice is centred on mokuhanga, the traditional Japanese water-based woodblock printing method. She came to the technique relatively recently, having trained in mokuhanga at the Mokuhanga School in Karuizawa, Japan, in 2019, and she belongs to the recent generation of British and Irish mokuhanga makers whose work is documented principally through the artist's own studio website (juliemurphyprintmaker.co.uk) and international exhibition lists rather than through published scholarship; her birth and death dates have not been published. She describes her technique in standard contemporary-revival terms: carving imagery into multiple sheets of wooden plywood (typically shina or birch) by hand with Japanese knives and chisels, applying water-based watercolour pigments to each block with brushes, and hand-printing onto fine Japanese paper (washi) with a bamboo baren, in a fully non-toxic, hand-pulled process built up across multiple impressions to layer colour and create gradated effects. Her gallery, organized as 2019-present, documents a consistent landscape and natural-world subject matter — coastal views, woodland interiors, and atmospheric land-and-sky studies — built in the multi-block colour register characteristic of the contemporary revival. Her highest-profile presentation in the dedicated mokuhanga circuit has been as a participating artist in the juried international exhibition of the 2024 International Mokuhanga Conference (IMC) at Echizen, which places her among the cohort of British and Irish makers whose mokuhanga careers have been built principally through the IMC platform rather than through the older, established British printmaking societies. Beyond the IMC she is documented through workshops and small exhibitions in the regional UK and Irish print scene, and she maintains an active studio presence on social media within the broader international mokuhanga revival community. Public-collection holdings have not been documented, and her place in the record is best characterized as that of a mid-career maker whose recognition has come principally through the IMC juried-exhibition route — a reflection of an understated public profile and of the genuinely limited scholarly literature on the recent British and Irish mokuhanga cohort.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇮🇪Ireland
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 5
Frequently Asked Questions
Julie Murphy is a contemporary printmaker based in Northern Ireland whose studio practice is centred on mokuhanga, the traditional Japanese water-based woodblock printing method. She came to the technique relatively recently, having trained in mokuhanga at the Mokuhanga School in Karuizawa, Japan, in 2019, and she belongs to the recent generation of British and Irish mokuhanga makers whose work is documented principally through the artist's own studio website (juliemurphyprintmaker.co.uk) and international exhibition lists rather than through published scholarship; her birth and death dates have not been published. She describes her technique in standard contemporary-revival terms: carving imagery into multiple sheets of wooden plywood (typically shina or birch) by hand with Japanese knives and chisels, applying water-based watercolour pigments to each block with brushes, and hand-printing onto fine Japanese paper (washi) with a bamboo baren, in a fully non-toxic, hand-pulled process built up across multiple impressions to layer colour and create gradated effects. Her gallery, organized as 2019-present, documents a consistent landscape and natural-world subject matter — coastal views, woodland interiors, and atmospheric land-and-sky studies — built in the multi-block colour register characteristic of the contemporary revival. Her highest-profile presentation in the dedicated mokuhanga circuit has been as a participating artist in the juried international exhibition of the 2024 International Mokuhanga Conference (IMC) at Echizen, which places her among the cohort of British and Irish makers whose mokuhanga careers have been built principally through the IMC platform rather than through the older, established British printmaking societies. Beyond the IMC she is documented through workshops and small exhibitions in the regional UK and Irish print scene, and she maintains an active studio presence on social media within the broader international mokuhanga revival community. Public-collection holdings have not been documented, and her place in the record is best characterized as that of a mid-career maker whose recognition has come principally through the IMC juried-exhibition route — a reflection of an understated public profile and of the genuinely limited scholarly literature on the recent British and Irish mokuhanga cohort.
Julie Murphy'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.
