Untitled

This untitled woodblock print by Idris Veitch is part of his ongoing engagement with mokuhanga, the traditional Japanese water-based printmaking process he practices from his base in Kingston, Jamaica. The convention of leaving a print untitled is widespread in contemporary mokuhanga, where many artists treat each impression as a self-sufficient visual statement rather than an illustration of a named subject. Production would have involved applying pigment with a brush directly to a carved block, then transferring the image to dampened [washi](/glossary/washi) using hand pressure from a [baren](/glossary/baren) — a sequence repeated for each color in the registration. Subtle [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) transitions, the soft bleed of color into paper fibers, and slight variations between impressions are characteristic outcomes of this method. As a Caribbean practitioner listed in the Mokumap directory, Veitch's presence in the field underscores how the contemporary mokuhanga community has grown into a genuinely international movement, with practitioners now active in regions that share no direct lineage with the Edo-period print tradition.