Untitled

This untitled print is part of Karen Pittman's body of mokuhanga work, the Japanese woodblock technique characterized by its water-based pigments, hand printing with a [baren](/glossary/baren), and use of [washi](/glossary/washi) as the receiving surface. The technique imposes specific constraints on composition: edges defined by carved relief rather than drawn line, color introduced through additional blocks each requiring independent carving and registration, and tonal modulation achieved through [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) rather than ink density. The practical effect is that compositions in mokuhanga tend to read as assemblages of discrete color fields rather than as continuous painterly surfaces. Pittman's appearance in the 2024 IMC Americas exhibition in Echizen places her within an international community of practitioners active through institutions including the Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory at Lake Kawaguchi, MI-LAB residencies, and the triennial International Mokuhanga Conferences. Untitled works in this context generally function as studio explorations of process rather than as illustrative or narrative images.