Rachael Ashley

A mokuhanga portrait that translates a photographic study of the sitter Rachael Ashley into the registered woodblock medium. Working from her own digital source imagery, Artz reduces the tonal range of the photograph into a sequence of carved blocks printed in water-based pigment on [washi](/glossary/washi), with each pass of the [baren](/glossary/baren) laying down a flat or graduated field. The portrait format isolates the figure against an unmodulated ground, a compositional choice that foregrounds contour, the planar separation of skin and hair, and the soft transitions achievable through [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) rather than relying on the continuous tone of the photographic original. The print sits within Artz's wider portrait series, in which she works through her circle of sitters one figure at a time, treating each as both a likeness and a study in how the analogue process re-encodes the photographic image. The translation across media—camera to block to paper—is itself part of the subject, consistent with her broader interest in moving between flat photographs and dimensional, hand-made objects.