Untitled

A second untitled print from Kay Brown's mokuhanga practice, this work reflects the technical vocabulary developed through her 2024 MI-LAB residency in Echizen. The traditional Japanese woodblock method involves cutting separate blocks for each colour and printing them in sequence with hand-mixed pigments bound in nori paste. Untitled works of this kind typically prioritise formal investigation: the play of registration, the layering of transparent passages, and the soft tonal transitions produced by bokashi, where pigment is graded on the block before printing. Brown's selection for the International Mokuhanga Conference Europe exhibition in the same year, representing England, situates this print within a contemporary international community of mokuhanga artists working outside Japan but in dialogue with its workshop traditions. The absence of a title invites attention to the surface itself — the texture of washi, the subtle relief left by the baren, and the absorptive qualities of water-based ink — rather than to subject matter, a stance consistent with much abstract contemporary mokuhanga.