Bleu Esquisse — Red Blue

Part of Kumazaki's ongoing Bleu Esquisse (Blue Sketch) sequence, this 2024 woodcut pairs a red field against the series' signature blue, the title functioning as a notation of the two pigments carried on the block rather than a representational subject. The work is hand-pulled in water-based ink in the mokuhanga tradition Kumazaki has worked in since her Tama Art University training, where pigment is brushed onto the block with nori paste and transferred to dampened washi under the pressure of a baren — a process that produces the soft saturation and matte surface visible across her output, distinct from the harder ink film of oil-based Western woodcut. The Esquisse premise treats the print as a worked study in chromatic relation: a planar composition in which red and blue meet across a carved edge, with the grain of the block and small irregularities of hand-pulling left legible. The series sits within a strand of contemporary Tokyo mokuhanga, circulated through venues such as the CWAJ Print Show, that uses the historical technique for non-representational, color-driven inquiry rather than the meisho-e or bijin-ga subjects of the Edo and Meiji periods.