Untitled

This untitled woodblock print emerges from Kay Brown's engagement with mokuhanga during the MI-LAB Basic Training Program C residency in Echizen in 2024. As a foundational work from a structured residency, the print likely demonstrates the core technical exercises taught at MI-LAB: registration using kento marks, controlled application of water-based pigment with the brush, and burnishing with a baren onto Echizen washi. Untitled works from residency contexts often function as studies in materials and process rather than finished narrative pieces, allowing the artist to absorb the rhythm of traditional Japanese printing under master instruction. Within Brown's body of work, this print sits at the intersection of her UK-based contemporary practice and direct exposure to the Japanese workshop tradition. The decision to leave the work untitled aligns with a tendency among contemporary mokuhanga practitioners trained at MI-LAB to foreground material qualities — the absorbency of kozo-fibre paper, the tonal range achievable through bokashi gradation — over literary or iconographic reference.