Into The Woods

Into The Woods suggests a forest interior or the threshold of one, a subject with a long history in East Asian landscape printmaking and one that mokuhanga renders well. The vertical repetition of trunks, the layered foliage, and the diffuse light beneath a canopy can be built up through successive impressions of water-based pigment onto washi, with bokashi used to grade light through depth. The keyblock carries the contour of branches and trunks while subsequent colour blocks fill the interior fields. Unlike classical meisho-e, which tend to identify a specific named place, a title such as Into The Woods marks the forest as a state or condition rather than a location, aligning with the contemplative, often interior register of contemporary mokuhanga. Ho Ching Wong's selection for the 2021 International Mokuhanga Conference juried exhibition in Nara places the print within an international community of artists who have adopted the technique outside Japan, and Hong Kong's participation in that community reflects the medium's continuing dispersion across East Asia.