Summer Tearoom

This print depicts the interior of a Japanese tea room (chashitsu) in summer, a recurring subject in Stewart's Kyoto-based practice. The composition likely centers on the quiet architectural geometry of tatami mats, shoji or sudare (reed blinds raised for ventilation), and the pale rectangular field of an inset alcove or tokonoma. Working in mokuhanga, Stewart prints water-based pigments through a [baren](/glossary/baren) onto absorbent [washi](/glossary/washi), allowing the paper itself to function as the room's diffuse summer light. [Bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations along window edges and floor planes describe the way midday brightness softens as it travels across straw matting and plaster walls. The print belongs to a sustained body of work in which Stewart documents the chashitsu and machiya rooms of Kyoto with a Western draughtsman's attention to perspective and a Japanese sensitivity to ma — the active emptiness between objects. As an American artist resident in Kyoto since 1986, Stewart adapts the [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) tradition of placing rooms in season, treating an unoccupied tea room as a portrait of a moment.