Dawn

Dawn captures the brief interval before sunrise, when colour returns to a landscape but direct light has not yet arrived. Stewart's print likely uses cool blue-greys at the base of the composition graduating through mauve to a pale, unsaturated upper sky, with any architectural or topographical elements rendered as silhouettes or near-silhouettes. The mokuhanga technique, with its absorbent [washi](/glossary/washi) and water-based pigments, registers these low-key transitions more sympathetically than oil-based intaglio or lithography, which is one reason Stewart — who also works in etching and lithography — turns to woodblock for atmospheric subjects. [Bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations applied wet to each block produce the soft tonal joins that define the dawn hour. The print sits within a small cycle of crepuscular subjects (Dawn, Sunrise, Moonlight) that read as a contemporary, secular variation on the seasonal and diurnal sequencing common to Japanese print series since the Edo period. Stewart's four decades in Kyoto are evident in the restraint and specificity of the colour choices.