The Serpent Strikes

The Serpent Strikes (2015), a woodblock print by Jed Henry, shows a bearded man in a pale-blue robe patterned with swirling wave-like arcs crouched behind two large hoop-bound wooden barrels, gripping a long dark weapon in both hands while a sheathed sword hangs at his hip, a dark cloth band tied over his hair. In the hazy background, two men in round straw hats emerge from the doorway of a tile-roofed building — one in sage green raising a rifle, the other in maroon robes brandishing a drawn, silver-bladed sword and holding a dark object in his other hand. The palette is dominated by muted blue-grey, brown, and olive tones, crossed by a diagonal band of orange-yellow light in the upper right where a torii gate is faintly visible through the mist, beside a vertical cartouche of black Japanese characters set on a blue-to-violet gradient ground.