move on spitzack woodblock woodcut mokuhanga print printmaking washi seattle art artist

"Move On" carries an implied temporal or narrative charge, suggesting transition, departure, or the passage of a moment rather than a static scene. Mokuhanga, despite the slow physical process of carving and hand-burnishing each block with a baren, has historically been used to capture motion — Hiroshige's travelers, Hokusai's wave, the wind-blown garments of bijin-ga figures — through compositional cues rather than gestural mark-making. Contemporary practitioners working in the medium often address movement through cropping, directional lines, or sequential color layers that imply rather than depict change. Without seeing the print, the title positions it within a body of work that engages with subject matter beyond traditional landscape or floral genres, consistent with Spitzack's broader practice as recognized at the 2024 International Mokuhanga Conference. His sustained engagement with the medium, beyond the introductory workshops common among Western printmakers, allows for this kind of thematic ambition within strict technical constraints.