2024 spitzack fort worden tree study madrone madrona Arbutus menziesii woodcut print woodblock mokuhanga seattle art artist relief printmaking lino linocut

This 2024 mokuhanga is a study of a Pacific madrone (Arbutus menziesii), the broadleaf evergreen native to the West Coast and notable for its peeling, copper-colored bark and sinuous limbs. Working from Fort Worden, Spitzack engages a tree species largely absent from the classical Japanese woodblock canon, which centered on pines, plums, and cherries. The madrone's distinctive bark — which exfoliates in thin sheets to reveal smoother, paler wood beneath — presents a specific technical problem in mokuhanga: rendering layered, partially translucent surfaces requires careful coordination of registration and pigment density across multiple blocks, often with bokashi gradients used to suggest the gradient between old and new bark. Spitzack's decision to identify the species by both common and Linnaean names signals a documentary precision that aligns the work with botanical-illustration tradition while remaining rooted in the meisho-e conventions of place-specific imagery. The print sits firmly within his Pacific Northwest tree-study series and reflects the regionally grounded direction of contemporary American mokuhanga.