Susan Ladipo

Susan Ladipo is a portrait print by Andrea G. Artz, drawn from the artist's ongoing series translating photographic portraits into mokuhanga, the Japanese water-based woodblock technique. The work originates as a digital photograph that Artz separates into colour layers, each carved into a separate cherry or shina block and printed in succession on dampened [washi](/glossary/washi) using a [baren](/glossary/baren). Mokuhanga's water-based pigments allow soft tonal transitions through [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation, particularly suited to the modulation of skin and the diffused light of a studio portrait. Registration is achieved through kentō marks cut into each block, ensuring the layered impressions align across the sheet. Within Artz's wider practice — which encompasses installation, sculpture and three-dimensional folded photographic objects — the woodblock portraits sit alongside her larger investigation of how the human figure can be translated between media. The print retains the descriptive function of photography while accepting the chromatic restraint and surface character of an analogue, hand-pulled impression.