Biography
Vaida Varnagiene is a Lithuanian-Irish printmaker working across intaglio etching, mokuhanga (Japanese water-based woodblock printing), digital print, and carborundum, based at Graphic Studio Dublin. Originally from Klaipėda, Lithuania, she has lived and worked in Dublin since 2007, building a parallel set of qualifications in fine-art printmaking and architecture.
She earned a BA (Honours) in Fine Art from the Technological University of Dublin in 2015, the year she received the Graphic Studio Dublin Graduate Award and became a studio member; she has also trained in urban design and landscape architecture, a background that informs the strong sense of architectural draftsmanship in her cityscape etchings (Thomas Street, Portobello, Camden Row, Rathmines, Grand Canal Square Docklands). Her practice runs in two registers: small to medium-scale intaglio and aquatint city-views of Dublin streetscapes and townscapes, and a separate body of carborundum-and-etching 'Architectonic Figure' works that abstract architectural form into figure-ground compositions.
Varnagiene deepened her expertise in mokuhanga during a 2019 MI-LAB Artist-in-Residence Program at Lake Kawaguchi, Japan — the international residency at Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory near Mt. Fuji that has trained an entire generation of non-Japanese mokuhanga practitioners. The residency produced the collective project 'Borderless,' an artist's book edition of eight sumi-ink mokuhanga prints presented in a scroll, made with co-residents from the USA, Ireland, Korea, and the UK, and addressing the political theme of separation in 2019. Her 2020 followup solo mokuhanga 'Deep Water' (76 × 48 cm, variable edition of 5) is the largest single sheet documented in her current Graphic Studio catalogue.
Her Kanreki contribution — created within Graphic Studio Dublin's 60th-anniversary 'red theme' brief — was shown at The Model, Sligo (2020), Graphic Studio Gallery (April 2021), and the 2021 International Mokuhanga Conference satellite events at Nara Prefectural Cultural Hall (November-December 2021). The 2023 Graphic Studio Dublin Wilkinson Award and a 2023 Culture Ireland Grant supported subsequent work, and her 2020 residency at Centre Culturel Irlandais (Paris) placed her in the Paris-Dublin printmaking exchange. She has also held a Graphic Studio Dublin Education Programme Officer role.
Varnagiene's work is held in the OPW State Art Collection (Office of Public Works, Ireland), Trinity College Dublin, and the China Printmaking Museum, with additional collections in Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, China, and Japan. Her Graphic Studio Dublin artist page currently lists 47 works ranging from small intaglio etchings (10 × 13 cm) to large carborundum prints (49 × 59 cm) and the 76 × 48 cm 'Deep Water' mokuhanga.
For Hanga's purposes, Varnagiene qualifies as a working mokuhanga practitioner with verified MI-LAB residency credentials, Kanreki exhibition selection, and an established intaglio-and-mokuhanga practice within the Graphic Studio Dublin community. Her output sits at the productive intersection of Lithuanian roots, Irish residence, and Japanese mokuhanga technique.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇮🇪Ireland
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
Frequently Asked Questions
Vaida Varnagiene is a Lithuanian-Irish printmaker working across intaglio etching, mokuhanga (Japanese water-based woodblock printing), digital print, and carborundum, based at Graphic Studio Dublin. Originally from Klaipėda, Lithuania, she has lived and worked in Dublin since 2007, building a parallel set of qualifications in fine-art printmaking and architecture.
Vaida Varnagiene'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.