After Agnes 10

After Agnes 10 belongs to O'Sullivan's extended series of mokuhanga responses to the work of Agnes Martin, the Canadian-American painter whose grids and pale horizontal bands defined a contemplative strand of postwar abstraction. The numeral indicates a sustained, iterative engagement rather than a single homage — a working method consistent with Martin's own practice of repeated motifs across nearly identical canvases. Executed in water-based pigments hand-printed with a [baren](/glossary/baren) onto [washi](/glossary/washi), the print likely translates Martin's pencil-drawn grids and washed acrylics into the layered transparencies that mokuhanga affords: [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations and the slight absorption of pigment into the paper fibers stand in for Martin's brushwork and graphite. The technique suits the source material, since both depend on quiet incident and the visible grain of their support. Made in 2020, the print sits within the period in which O'Sullivan's mokuhanga practice was consolidating after her 2019 NCAD graduation and Graphic Studio Dublin residency, and prefigures her selection for the Kanreki exhibition. The series situates her within a contemporary international cohort using mokuhanga for non-representational, meditative ends rather than the medium's historical [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) subjects.