Light Time Silence #25

The twenty-fifth print in the 'Light, Time, Silence' series, this stone lithograph extends a project Yamamoto has maintained continuously since 1992. The series catalogues recurring interior motifs — wooden chairs, staircase treads, door frames, window light — held in a strict monochrome register. Where many contemporary Japanese printmakers have moved toward color screenprint or digitally assisted woodblock, Yamamoto has remained committed to the older lithographic stone, drawing directly with crayon and tusche before each printing. The matte surface and the dense blacks particular to stone lithography are integral to the work: the medium itself supplies the silence the title names. Yamamoto's training as an oil painter, with an MFA in oil painting rather than in graphic art, shows in the way he constructs a scene through tone before line. Within his wider output, which includes the 'Nostalgic Scenery' and 'The Sunshine Filtering through Foliage' series, the numbered 'Light, Time, Silence' prints form his ongoing core body of work.