Sarah Reclining

Sarah Reclining is a horizontal figure study in mokuhanga, depicting the sitter — a recurring model in Lyon's portrait practice — in a recumbent pose that descends from the long Western tradition of the reclining nude while being executed in a thoroughly Japanese matrix. Lyon typically works at scale far larger than Edo-period oban sheets, joining several pieces of kozo washi to accommodate near life-size figures, and translates a photographic source into hundreds of tonal layers cut by CNC router into cherry plywood. Each block is then inked and pulled by hand with a baren, so that the finished sheet carries both the cool precision of digital halftone separation and the velvety, water-based registration of traditional ukiyo-e. Reclining figures appear repeatedly in his Sarah and Lily series, allowing him to test how flesh, bedding, and cast shadow read when reduced to flat planes of layered sumi and earth pigment. The print belongs to his sustained investigation, beginning around the early 2000s, of the female nude as a subject for post-digital mokuhanga.