Spring by Eva Pietzcker - Davidson Galleries

Spring forms part of Pietzcker's seasonal cycle, a subject framework with long precedent in Japanese printmaking, where the calendar and the natural world supply much of the canonical imagery. The print registers the season through a specific motif, such as budding branches, a thawing watercourse, or early light, rather than through generalized symbolism. Working in the mokuhanga method she studied at the Nagasawa Art Park Program in 2003, Pietzcker uses cherrywood blocks, water-based pigments, and [washi](/glossary/washi) pulled by hand with a [baren](/glossary/baren), building tonal subtlety through [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations and the layered transparency that water-based pigments allow on absorbent paper. The result differs in surface from the saturated, opaque effects of oil-based Western relief printing: thinner, more atmospheric, closer to watercolor in feeling. Pietzcker's seasonal subjects connect her practice to both the haiku tradition's seasonal markers, or kigo, and the specific landscapes she has worked from in northern Europe and the American West. The print represents one register in her larger project of locating observed places within a Japanese material vocabulary.