Dad

A restrained four-block portrait of the artist's father, distilling the subject to essential tonal relationships. With only four blocks, Lyon works within a severely limited vocabulary of tone and color, requiring careful allocation of each layer to describe form, shadow, and highlight. The economy of means reflects a long tradition in mokuhanga of achieving maximum expressiveness through minimal printing passes. Printed on washi, the image benefits from the paper's natural warmth and slight surface texture, which softens the transition between tonal areas. The intimacy of the subject — a family portrait rather than a commissioned study — gives the work a direct, unguarded quality within Lyon's broader figurative practice.