Flowering flames

A mezzotint whose title suggests a meeting of botanical and elemental imagery, with petals or stamens evoking the upward motion of flame. The composition likely exploits mezzotint's capacity for deep, saturated darkness against burnished highlights — well suited to a subject built around emergent light. Saito learned the rocker-and-burnisher technique without formal training after shifting from abstract oil painting to intaglio in 1968, and works of this kind retain a residual abstractionist sensibility, treating natural form as a study in tonal contrast rather than literal description. The image belongs alongside his iris and floral plates as part of a body of intaglio kacho-e that extends a long-standing Japanese genre into a European print medium. Mezzotint's labor — hours of mechanical rocking before any image can be drawn — is especially visible in works that turn on a single luminous form against deep ground.