Ann Norfield

A portrait of Ann Norfield realised in mokuhanga, the Japanese water-based woodblock tradition that Artz has adopted as a counterpoint to her photographic training. The print is built from a photographic source through a sequence of carved blocks, with each pigment layer applied by brush and burnished by hand into the [washi](/glossary/washi) using a [baren](/glossary/baren). Water-based inks behave differently from the oil-based pigments of Western printmaking: they sink into the fibres of the paper, allowing for soft tonal modulation through [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation along a block's edge. These properties shape the portrait's surface, which retains the structure of a photographic likeness while acquiring the matte, fibrous quality of hand-printed paper. Ann Norfield belongs to Artz's ongoing series of named portrait subjects — a contemporary inflection of the historical portrait genre, translated through a technique developed in early-modern Japan. The series runs in parallel with her three-dimensional folded photographic portraits, and the two strands share a concern with the figure's transition from flat image to material object.