Riddled Ripples - Gihon River

"Riddled Ripples - Gihon River" belongs to Florence Neal's ongoing engagement with water as both subject and formal problem. The Gihon River, one of the four rivers named in the Genesis account of Eden and associated with ancient Jerusalem, provides the nominal anchor for what is likely an abstracted rendering of moving water — surface disturbance, reflected light, and the interrupted rhythm of ripples across a current. Working in mokuhanga, Neal exploits the medium's water-based pigments and washi absorbency to capture translucency and tonal gradation that oil-based Western printmaking resists. Bokashi gradients — the soft tonal blending characteristic of Japanese woodblock technique — would serve naturally here, evoking the fluctuation of light on water without hard edges. Neal's practice consistently moves between observational memory and abstraction, and this title suggests a similar tension: the river is named and specific, yet "riddled" implies fragmentation or disruption of a legible surface into patterned complexity. The work reflects Neal's sustained interest in landscape as experienced through close attention to water.