kittehkats: “Masaharu Aoyama - “Cat on Roof” ”

The slug references Masaharu Aoyama (1893–1969), a Shōwa-era Japanese printmaker known for his cat subjects, and his print Cat on Roof. Tagged here under Cozzolino's cat works, the entry sits within a recurring feline thread in her output, cats being among the personal subjects she returns to alongside the gardens and quiet domestic scenes that characterise much of her practice. Aoyama's cat prints, produced within the sōsaku-hanga milieu of the mid-twentieth century, treat the animal as an observed inhabitant of the Japanese urban roofscape rather than a stylised motif, and that observational handling of cat imagery is consistent with how contemporary European mokuhanga artists have approached the subject. The reference underscores Cozzolino's grounding in the historical Japanese print canon, which she absorbed across two trips to Japan before committing to mokuhanga full-time from 2011, and which continues to inform her choice of subject matter and approach to composition.