Paul Hannon

Paul Hannon is one of Andrea G. Artz's mokuhanga portraits, a series in which the artist — originally trained as a portrait photographer — recasts photographic likeness through Japanese water-based woodblock printing. The print depicts the male sitter in isolation, with the unprinted [washi](/glossary/washi) reading as both negative space and material substrate. Each tonal block is carved from cherry, inked with rice paste and water pigment, and pressed by hand using a [baren](/glossary/baren); kentō registration marks hold the successive impressions in alignment so that the photographic source survives across the layered passes. [Bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) is used in the modelling of the head, with pigment graded outward from areas of greater density to produce continuous tonal transitions rather than hatched or stippled effects. The portrait is conceived not as a reproduction of a photograph but as its remaking through a different, slower technical logic. It connects to Artz's wider focus on the human figure in space — a concern that runs from her flat photographic and printed work into her sculptural, folded-paper installations.