Waiting Time (Matsutoki)

"Waiting Time" (Matsutoki) evokes the experience of waiting — the specific quality of suspended time when one is between events, neither actively engaged nor at rest. In bijin-ga, the waiting woman is a classical subject loaded with implication: who is she waiting for, what will the arrival or non-arrival of that person mean, what does the quality of her waiting tell us about the relationship? Binnie's treatment of this fraught moment would deploy the atmospheric subtlety of his woodblock work to suggest the emotional texture of suspension and anticipation.