Lightning (Inazuma)

"Lightning" (Inazuma) is among the most challenging atmospheric subjects for a woodblock printmaker — the instantaneous flash that illuminates a dark sky requires the print to render light and dark in their most extreme contrast, the bolt's jagged path cutting through the composition. In Japanese aesthetics, lightning (inazuma, literally "flash of rice fields" — the ancient belief that lightning fertilized crops) carries both natural force and poetic resonance. Binnie's print likely treats this as a landscape in which atmospheric conditions become the primary subject.