Aspen Grove

A more expansive composition than the single-subject Aspen, this print presents a forest interior densely populated with vertical aspen trunks receding into shallow pictorial space. The repetition of pale columnar trunks against darker undergrowth produces an all-over patterning that recalls the screen compositions of Edo-period painters while drawing on the photographic close-cropping characteristic of contemporary landscape art. Lyon's CNC-assisted block carving permits the registration of numerous tonal blocks—each printed by hand with [baren](/glossary/baren) on dampened [washi](/glossary/washi)—producing the layered atmospheric depth visible across his large-scale forest works. The numeric suffix in the slug indicates this is a variant or second state of an earlier composition, consistent with Lyon's iterative working method of revisiting and refining subjects across multiple impressions. The print exemplifies the dialogue between mechanical precision and the intrinsic irregularities of mokuhanga that defines the post-digital wing of contemporary Japanese-method printmaking.