Dogwood 11

Dogwood 11 belongs to Hajime Namiki's extended series devoted to the flowering dogwood (hanamizuki), a tree introduced to Japan from the United States in the early twentieth century and now beloved in spring gardens. The print likely isolates a single dogwood against a softly graduated background, the four-petaled bracts rendered in pale pink or cream against deep foliage. Namiki's mokuhanga technique relies on careful bokashi gradations applied with the baren to handmade washi, building atmospheric depth without line-heavy outlines. The understated palette and centered composition typify his sosaku-hanga approach, in which the artist personally carves and prints every block using water-based pigments. Within his wider body of work, the Dogwood prints sit alongside cherry, maple, and pine subjects as meditations on the solitary tree, a motif Namiki has refined across decades. The numbered sequence reflects his iterative practice of returning to the same subject under shifting seasonal and tonal conditions.