burning desires spitzack woodblock woodcut mokuhanga print printmaking washi seattle art

The title suggests fire imagery — flames, smoke, heat — rendered through a medium that conveys glowing intensity through bokashi gradation rather than literal flame depiction. A mokuhanga rendering would build warmth through layered color blocks of vermillion, orange, and yellow against darker grounds, with the natural pigments behaving differently from oil-based inks: matte, absorbent, with a slight bleed at the fiber edges of the kozo or gampi washi. The composition might be figurative (a candle, a hearth, a burning object) or symbolic (an emanating heart, a dream-state radiance). Spitzack's engagement with metaphorical titles across this body of work places his practice within the contemporary mokuhanga community's interest in using the medium for emotional and psychological subjects rather than the topographic or seasonal themes of historical meisho-e and kacho-e. The hand-printed character of mokuhanga, where each impression registers slight variations in pressure and saturation, lends the imagery of desire its appropriate impermanence.