Where I Am — composition 2

The second plate of the 2023 cycle shifts the framing within the same domestic space, working the soft-ground etched line against an aquatint ground of muted grays. Soft-ground's characteristic ability to register textile impressions — the weft of cloth, the nap of fabric pressed into the resin — appears in the marked passages, while the aquatint settles around them as an enveloping atmosphere. Ogura's serial approach here recalls older Japanese conventions of returning to the same motif under shifting conditions, akin to the meisho-e impulse turned inward toward the room rather than outward toward famous places. The dining table operates as both subject and emotional anchor; furniture takes on the weight of portraiture without the figure. As in much of Ogura's Kyoto-based practice, the print's restraint and tonal compression read as an extension of yōga training filtered through a quietly autobiographical lens.