Jim Leavis

This mokuhanga portrait depicts the named sitter Jim Leavis, following the format Artz applies across her portrait series: a single figure photographed by the artist and then translated into water-based woodblock print on [washi](/glossary/washi). The image is carved across registered blocks and impressed by hand with a [baren](/glossary/baren) using rice-paste-bound pigments, yielding flat colour fields in place of the source photograph's continuous tonal range. The grain of the wood and the slight registration shifts characteristic of hand-printed mokuhanga remain visible, marking the print as a made object distinct from its photographic origin. Within Artz's wider practice, the Leavis portrait belongs to a group of individually named contemporary sitters, often connected to London, that together form an extended study of the human figure as specific individual rather than anonymous type. The print also exemplifies the artist's broader project of moving photographic portraiture into the slower, more material register of Japanese woodblock printing.