Dr Julia Shaw, phootgraphed in her apt in London, UK. Dr. Julia Shaw is a psychological scientist (UCL) and a science communicator. She is best known for her work in the areas of memory and criminal psychology

This print depicts Dr Julia Shaw, a psychological scientist at UCL whose work addresses memory and criminal psychology, photographed in her London apartment. The domestic setting — rather than a clinical or academic backdrop — gives Artz's mokuhanga a particular tonal register, with interior architecture and personal objects reduced to flat color fields against which the figure is registered. Each color in the print corresponds to a separately carved block, inked with water-based pigment and pressed into the [washi](/glossary/washi) with the [baren](/glossary/baren). Soft passages, such as the modeling of skin or the diffusion of window light, are introduced through [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradients applied with a damp brush before each impression. The choice of subject — a researcher concerned with the unreliability of memory — pairs suggestively with a medium whose every impression is an act of selective retention: what the carved block holds is what remains, while everything else is cut away. The print sits within Artz's wider practice of commissioned portraits of contemporary intellectual and creative figures.