Reverence

"Reverence," a 2013 charcoal and graphite work by Masahiko Minami, renders a dense hillside of evergreen trees in monochrome, their needled forms built up through dense cross-hatched strokes. The upper portion is rendered as an almost solid mass of dark, textured foliage against a pale sky, while in the lower right a lighter-toned fir tree and neighboring pine stand out with visible individual needle clusters, catching more contrast and detail than the darker trees behind them. A narrow strip of untouched white paper along the bottom edge suggests ground or mist beneath the tree line.