Margaret Lovell

A portrait identifying its subject by personal name. The British sculptor Margaret Lovell, born 1939, is known for figurative bronzes; if the print depicts her, it locates Reed's mokuhanga practice in the tradition of artist-portraying-artist, with the printmaker engaging a peer working in another medium. Mokuhanga's water-based pigments and hand-burnished impressions onto absorbent [kozo](/glossary/kozo) [washi](/glossary/washi) yield a soft-edged tonal surface that differs markedly from etched or lithographed portraiture and rewards subjects with strong facial structure and sculptural presence. The 2021 IMC [sumi](/glossary/sumi)-themed juried exhibition in Nara emphasized prints worked in carbon ink, where the absence of color shifts attention to the carved line, the paper's texture, and the gradient potential of [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) shading cut into the block. Reed's inclusion among the international participants reflects the geographic range of contemporary mokuhanga, with North American practitioners contributing alongside Japanese, European, and Australasian colleagues to a community organized through the triennial conference.