Christopher-Steele

This mokuhanga portrait depicts a named sitter, Christopher Steele, working within the same format Artz uses across her portrait series: a single figure derived from her own photograph and translated into water-based woodblock print on [washi](/glossary/washi). The blocks are carved by hand and impressed with a [baren](/glossary/baren) using rice-paste-bound pigments, producing flat colour areas in place of photographic continuous tone. The mokuhanga technique allows visible grain from the woodblock to register in the printed surface, distinguishing it from both the source photograph and from the dense overprinting characteristic of Edo-period [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e). Within the wider portrait project, the Steele print belongs to a sequence of individually named London-connected sitters, where each title fixes the subject as a specific person rather than a type. This naming practice underlines Artz's interest in the human figure as a particular individual, carried through a print medium that slows the act of looking and remakes the photographic likeness as a hand-pulled object.