Julie Strasheim - Painter, China

The title suggests a work tied to Strasheim's identity as a painter working in China, possibly a self-referential image or a print engaging with her dual practice across painting and mokuhanga. Without confirmed visual documentation, the work likely reflects her ongoing exploration of personal subject matter through traditional Japanese water-based woodblock methods. Strasheim's recognized practice involves printing on handmade kizuki kozo paper with the baren, building tonal depth through successive impressions and careful registration. Her award-winning 'expanded egg #2' (2023) demonstrates a sensibility oriented toward intimate, contemplative forms rather than landscape or figural narrative, and a similar restraint can be expected here. The mokuhanga technique permits soft transitions through bokashi gradation and luminous, absorbent surfaces unique to washi, qualities Strasheim has cultivated through extended training. As a contemporary practitioner working between China and Japan, her output bridges geographies while remaining rooted in the material discipline of mokuhanga, a tradition she engages at the level recognized by the International Mokuhanga Conference. This print sits within that broader body of work concerned with surface, substrate, and the meditative pace of hand-pulled printing.