Untitled

An untitled print from Shimizu's ongoing mokuhanga practice, hand-printed using water-based pigments applied to [washi](/glossary/washi) with a [baren](/glossary/baren). Untitled works in her output serve various purposes: technical exercises, color studies, edition variations, or completed works she preferred to leave open for the viewer's interpretation. The mokuhanga method requires that each color be carved on a separate cherry or shina block and printed in sequence, with [kento](/glossary/kento) registration marks ensuring alignment. Shimizu's prints often pair restrained palettes—earth tones, blue-grays, muted greens—with compositions organized around a central motif and surrounding negative space. Her four-year apprenticeship in Kyoto under Tomikichiro Tokuriki and Yoshisuke Funasaka in the late 1970s placed her within a lineage that continued the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) ideal of the artist as designer, carver, and printer rather than the Edo-era division of those roles among separate workshop hands. Whatever its specific subject, this print carries those technical and conceptual roots into the present moment of her practice.