over the hill spitzack woodblock woodcut mokuhanga print printmaking washi seattle art

Title can be read literally — a landscape composition with a horizon obscured by a rising hill — or idiomatically, as commentary on aging or decline. Mokuhanga's history includes meisho-e landscapes by Hokusai, Hiroshige, and Kawase Hasui in which the hill or pass plays a central organizing role, with travelers, paths, or weather as subordinate elements. Whether Spitzack's print engages that lineage directly or treats the title figuratively, the technique's strengths apply: bokashi gradations for sky and terrain, flat areas of color for foliage or earth, and the soft-edged texture of pigment carried into washi by the baren. As a Seattle-based artist working in mokuhanga, Spitzack has access to a Pacific Northwest landscape vocabulary distinct from the Tōkaidō stations or Edo-period mountain views, but the formal vocabulary of woodblock landscape work remains available. His 2024 International Mokuhanga Conference recognition in Echizen places his landscape and observational work within an international community renewing the tradition.