Acropolis original conte drawing

A conte drawing of the Acropolis in Athens — one of Binnie's preparatory works documenting his travels with traditional Japanese printmaking sensibility — captures the ancient citadel in the soft, tonal medium of conte crayon. For Binnie, whose "Travels with the Master" series brought the vocabulary of shin-hanga landscape to European and American settings, such drawings represent the first stage of a process that would eventually render the scene in woodblock. The Acropolis sits in its Mediterranean light, waiting to become something Japanese.