Ox

A second variation on the ushi character, differing from its companion in palette and surface treatment. Where the first impression establishes the character as solid architectural mass, this version shifts the ground tone toward a warmer earth register or inverts the figure-ground relationship through alternate inking of the cement-embedded matrix. Maki Haku worked extensively in series, returning to the same kanji across multiple compositions to test how technical variables—pressure under the baren, ink viscosity, sequence of color passes, depth of relief carving—reshape what is nominally the same image. The repetition is methodological rather than redundant: each impression reveals what the character can hold under different physical conditions. This serial impulse reflects his absorption of Art Informel's emphasis on process and material, transposed onto a printmaking practice that rejected sōsaku-hanga's painterly conventions in favor of sculpture's tactility. The ox motif's recurrence in his oeuvre signals its centrality to his ideographic vocabulary.