Clouds in the Shadow

A mezzotint completed in the year Omori finished his Master's program in Western Painting at Tohoku University of Art and Design. The subject — clouds rendered in shadow rather than direct light — exploits a tonal register the mezzotint plate is well equipped to deliver. Where most printmaking techniques struggle to differentiate values within a dark passage, the rocker-prepared plate begins from full black; selective burnishing then recovers the partial illumination that defines a shadowed cloud's volume. The result reads as form barely emerging from darkness, which connects to a longer Japanese tradition of treating air, mist, and weather as subjects in their own right. This print sits at the transition between Omori's graduate work and his independent practice, and shares its formal concerns with Black Clouds (2015) and the later Clouds and Building (2017).