Lifelines

Lifelines is a mokuhanga print produced by Bowden in 2020, executed in the Japanese water-based woodblock technique she trained in on Awaji Island. The title suggests a meditation on linear traces — whether the creases of the human palm, contour lines on a map, or the organic markings left by time on a surface — a thematic register consistent with the contemplative, semi-abstract tendencies of contemporary non-Japanese mokuhanga practitioners working outside the historical ukiyo-e categories of bijin-ga or meisho-e. Technically, mokuhanga of this kind relies on hand-burnishing with a baren onto dampened washi, building tone through successive impressions of water-based pigment and rice paste; the medium favours soft, atmospheric transitions and bokashi gradations rather than the hard contour line of oil-based relief printing. Within Bowden's wider body of work, which has developed since her 2006 Awaji apprenticeship and her participation in the 1st International Mokuhanga Conference in 2011, Lifelines belongs to a strand of practice that uses the disciplined surface of washi and water-based ink as a ground for quiet, mark-led abstraction rather than figurative depiction.