Untitled

This untitled print reflects Alex Mankiewicz's grounding in Kyoto's printmaking culture, where he began his career before his practice expanded across France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia. Kyoto remains a center for mokuhanga instruction, and Mankiewicz's technical approach carries traces of that lineage: a carved keyblock that establishes line, successive color blocks registered with kentō notches, and the pressure of the [baren](/glossary/baren) transferring water-based pigment onto absorbent [washi](/glossary/washi). The image is built up rather than printed in a single pass, with each pull adding a discrete layer of tone or shape. Where Edo-period [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e) relied on the division of labor between designer, carver, and printer, Mankiewicz works as a sole-author printmaker — designing, cutting, and pulling each impression himself. The result is a print whose construction is legible at close range: the grain of the wood, the slight shifts in registration, and the matte absorption of pigment into the paper surface all register as evidence of the hand behind the image.