Into the Sky

A title suggesting upward motion or aspiration, the print likely depicts birds in flight, rising smoke or cloud, or an abstracted compositional gesture toward the vertical. Matsubara's work often pairs concrete subjects with implied spiritual or emotional states, and Into the Sky likely uses the directional energy of the carved block — vertical gouge marks, ascending shapes — to evoke ascent itself rather than illustrating it descriptively. The mokuhanga medium suits this kind of suggested movement: the baren-pressed ink and visible wood grain create surface incident that can read as wind, atmosphere, or motion. The print fits within the more lyrical and abstracted strand of her practice, where natural observation gives way to symbolic composition. The influence of Munakata Shikō, the Aomori-born sosaku-hanga artist whose work fused Buddhist iconography with expressionist carving, is visible in this kind of subject matter. Into the Sky also reflects the broader twentieth-century sosaku-hanga emphasis on the artist's emotional content over the reproduction of established subjects, distinguishing it from the workshop-based ukiyo-e tradition.