Ryan McClelland

This portrait of Ryan McClelland is printed in the mokuhanga technique, with water-based pigments hand-burnished onto [washi](/glossary/washi) from a series of carved woodblocks. As in Artz's other portrait prints, the source is her own photography, and the woodblock acts as a translating medium: the continuous tones of the photograph are reduced to a small number of registered colour and tone passes, with [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradients used to model the transitions of the face. The kentō registration system, cut directly into the edges of each block, holds the layers in alignment as the print is built up. Compositionally the work isolates the sitter against an even ground, a framing that derives from Artz's earlier training as a studio portrait photographer. Within her wider interdisciplinary practice—which extends from photography and collage into sculptural, folded paper portraits and site-specific installation—the mokuhanga portraits constitute the flat, repeatable form of the same investigation, examining what survives when a digital photographic likeness is re-made by hand in carved wood and pigment on paper.