Where I Am — composition 4

The fourth print in the cycle is built on the interplay between soft-ground's textile-derived marks and aquatint's even tonal fields, with the artist again confining the field of view to the dining room she returns to throughout her practice. The aquatint resin dust, fused to the plate and bitten in stages, produces the granular grays that articulate shadow, table edge and wall plane; soft-ground supplies the recorded textures and contour drawing layered above. The image's compression — a near-domestic interior turned into a stage — relates Ogura's work to an older Japanese tradition of investing ordinary rooms with quiet narrative weight, while her use of intaglio techniques reflects her training in Western Painting at Kyoto University of Art and Design and her award of the Uryū Prize there.