Palm Trees

Palm Trees is a botanical or landscape subject likely drawn from Sekino's international travels, which took him to Hawaii, the United States mainland, Mexico, and elsewhere from the late 1950s onward. Tropical motifs entered his work occasionally as a counterpoint to the cold-climate landscapes of his native Aomori and the urban scenes of his Tokaido series. The subject suits the woodblock medium: the silhouettes of palm fronds and trunks reduce naturally to bold negative shapes against a flat sky, exploiting the strengths of mokuhanga in pattern and contour. Sekino's mature technique used multiple registered impressions to build saturated color from layered transparent and opaque pigments on thick washi, with bokashi gradation often deployed in skies. The composition belongs to a body of work in which Sekino expanded the sosaku-hanga vocabulary beyond traditionally Japanese themes to include subjects encountered during his postwar international career.