Nicole Polonsky

Nicole Polonsky is drawn from Andrea G. Artz's body of mokuhanga portraits, in which a digital photograph of the sitter is colour-separated and translated onto multiple cherry blocks for water-based woodblock printing. The image isolates a single figure, foregoing background detail in favour of the unprinted expanse of washi that itself functions as a compositional element. Tone is built up from successive impressions of nori-mixed pigment burnished into dampened paper with a baren, with bokashi gradations smoothing transitions across skin and hair. Kentō notches cut into each block hold the layers in sub-millimetre register, allowing photographic detail to survive the translation into print. Mokuhanga's matte, absorbed surface gives the portrait a tactile quality distinct both from photographic prints and from oil-based Western relief printing. Within Artz's wider practice, which extends from photography into sculpture, collage and folded-paper installations, these portraits function as a flat counterpart to her three-dimensional figure works, recording the sitter through the slow accretion of hand-printed layers rather than the single moment of the camera shutter.