They Burnt and Fall

They Burnt and Fall, tagged with Autumn Foliage, treats the seasonal transformation of leaves as both a chromatic and a temporal subject. The title's verbs frame the leaves' colour change as combustion and their descent as a consequence of it, condensing the season into a single action. Mokuhanga is well matched to autumn imagery: the water-based reds, oranges, and ochres of traditional pigments such as beni and shu, when printed onto [washi](/glossary/washi), produce the saturated yet permeable colour fields that distinguish the technique from oil-based relief printing. [Bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) can grade individual leaves from green through to red, while overlapping impressions build the density of falling foliage. The seasonal subject has a long lineage in Japanese printmaking, from the [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e) of the Edo period through the [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) landscapes of the early twentieth century. Ho Ching Wong's exhibition at the 2021 International Mokuhanga Conference in Nara situates this print within the present-day international community of practitioners, in which Hong Kong-based artists contribute to the medium's continued dispersion across East Asia.