once floating now knowing

The title evokes a passage from suspension to recognition or settlement, a thematic register consistent with Cahill's engagement with geological time and material transformation. As a mokuhanga in an edition of 10, the print would have been hand-pulled using a [baren](/glossary/baren) on [washi](/glossary/washi), with water-based pigments applied through successive woodblock impressions. The small edition size reflects the labour involved in registering multiple blocks by hand and managing dampened paper across the run. Cahill's practice draws on her work as a pigment maker and her position on the north-west coast of Ireland, where bog, ocean, and shifting weather inform a vocabulary of soft tonal transitions and atmospheric grounds. [Bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations — produced by graduating pigment across the block face before each impression — are characteristic of the landscape-oriented contemporary mokuhanga that Cahill has developed through her membership of Graphic Studio Dublin and her connection to the Wild Pigment Project.