Black Clouds

An early mezzotint from Omori's graduate-school period at Tohoku University of Art and Design. The title points to a study in dense cloud mass rendered through the medium's characteristic dark-to-light working method: the rocker-prepared plate holds a uniform black, and burnishing releases form from within that field. Cloud subjects offer particular advantages for mezzotint because the diffuse, layered structure of vapour maps directly onto the medium's tonal gradients — hard edges are unnecessary, and soft transitions across the burnished plate read as atmospheric depth. This 2015 print pre-dates the artist's Master's completion in 2016 and sits among the earliest works in what would become a sustained series of weather and sky subjects, anchoring his practice around small natural phenomena set against the velvety blacks that mezzotint produces more readily than any other intaglio process.