12 Views of Mount Fuji #5

The fifth print in Hey's series reinterpreting one of the most established subjects in the Japanese landscape tradition: Mount Fuji. The series title consciously echoes Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and the broader genre of meisho-e, but compresses the format to twelve compositions. Working in traditional mokuhanga, Hey hand-carves each block from cherry or shina plywood and prints with water-based pigments on washi using a baren. Bokashi gradations are typical for Fuji subjects, where the mountain is set against atmospheric sky and water passages requiring careful tonal modulation across multiple impressions. As a Danish-born artist trained at the Nagasawa Art Park residency under Tadashi Toda and Shunzo Matsuda, Hey's sustained engagement with Fuji situates his practice within a lineage of non-Japanese artists adapting meisho-e conventions while observing their technical disciplines — kentō registration, transparent water-based pigments, and the relationship between baren pressure and the absorbency of the sheet.