Dinah Kenyon

The mokuhanga process forces a sequence of decisions about how a likeness is carried — whether by the line of a nose, the angle of a glance, the boundary of a haircut against the background. Each block is cut to a single tonal field or colour, and the kento system ensures that successive impressions build into a coherent face rather than a misaligned one. Printing is by hand with a baren on dampened washi, with water-based pigments brushed onto the block before each pull. The print sits within Artz's continuing series of named woodblock portraits, in which the sitter's name rather than an abstracted title gives each work its identity. That naming convention is consistent with her longer-term concern with particular bodies in particular spaces, the same concern that drives the three-dimensional paper portraits of her recent installations.