Untitled work by Kay Brown

Kay Brown's fourth untitled woodblock print continues the line of work produced around her 2024 MI-LAB residency and IMC Europe exhibition appearance. Mokuhanga practitioners trained in Echizen — itself a centre of washi production for over 1,500 years — typically gain particular sensitivity to the relationship between paper and pigment, since the local kozo-fibre sheets are integral to the printing tradition. An untitled print in this group probably exploits that material relationship: the way watercolour pigments sit within rather than on the surface of washi, producing a depth distinct from oil-based Western relief printing. As a UK-based artist returning to her studio with this technical grounding, Brown joins a generation of European mokuhanga practitioners — many connected through MI-LAB and the International Mokuhanga Conference network — working to sustain the technique outside its country of origin. The untitled designation again places the emphasis on print as object and process rather than as illustrated narrative.