Fragments Print 1

Fragments Print 1 (2025) is a mokuhanga in abstract idiom, produced using water-based pigments hand-burnished onto washi with a baren rather than impressed under a press. As the opening sheet of the editioned Fragments subset, it establishes the registration scheme — likely controlled by kento marks carved directly into the woodblocks — and the restricted palette that the subsequent prints in the numbered run revisit and recombine. The 'Fragments' title points to a compositional logic of partial, semi-discrete forms rather than continuous fields, a strategy consistent with Desforges's wider practice across lithography and etching, where images are typically assembled from layered passages. The work belongs to her sustained engagement with mokuhanga as a contemporary, abstract medium following her five-week residency in Japan in 2018, and reflects the studio-based approach she has continued to develop from the West Yorkshire Print Workshop. The medium's characteristic absorption of pigment into the long fibres of washi gives the printed marks a softness unavailable to oil-based Western relief printmaking.