Rob White

A water-based woodblock portrait of the sitter Rob White, printed on Japanese washi using the mokuhanga method. The image likely centres on the head and shoulders, a framing Artz favours in her portrait work, with the figure rendered through a small number of carved blocks that separate the sitter from the surrounding ground. The hand-burnished impression, taken with a baren, produces the matte, slightly absorbed quality characteristic of water-based pigment on long-fibred paper, distinct from the surface sheen of oil-based relief printing. Artz's source material for this kind of portrait is her own photography, and the translation into block form involves reducing a continuous-tone image into discrete planes of colour and tone, often with bokashi gradients used to soften the transition between facial planes. Within her wider practice—which extends to folded, three-dimensional paper portraits and site-specific installations—the flat printed portrait functions as the base register, the photographic likeness held in two dimensions before it is cut, folded, or installed elsewhere.