Rory Brooke

This mokuhanga portrait of Rory Brooke is one of a series in which Artz works through individual sitters from her photographic archive, transposing each into the carved and registered woodblock format. The print is made on [washi](/glossary/washi) using water-based pigments applied to the block with brush and rice-paste binder, then transferred to the sheet by hand pressure with a [baren](/glossary/baren). The technique produces flat, even fields of colour and the soft directional gradients known as [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi), both of which Artz uses to model the face without resorting to crosshatching or halftone effects. Compositionally, the portrait isolates the figure against a quiet ground, a treatment consistent with her trained background in studio portraiture, where the sitter is given the full attention of the frame. Set against her sculptural and installation work—in which photographic portraits are folded into filigree paper objects—the woodblock prints represent the two-dimensional, multiplied form of the same investigation: how a likeness behaves when it is moved out of the photograph and into another medium.