Pine 3

"Pine 3" sits among the earlier impressions in Manami Ito's Pine series, where she first established the formal vocabulary that has carried through her later work. The print presumably foregrounds a single pine or a tight cluster, the trunk and primary limbs articulated through dense drypoint hatching while the needle clouds are built up from finer, more directional marks. Because drypoint records every variation in pressure and angle of the needle, the burr running alongside each scratched line accepts ink unevenly, producing the warm, plush blacks for which the technique is prized. Ito's restraint with the medium — no aquatint, no etched line, no color — places the burden of description entirely on accumulated drypoint mark-making. The series as a whole reflects her grounding in Kyoto City University of Arts' printmaking program and her sustained interest in the trees of Japanese gardens.