Winter composition 2

Part of a sequence Iwami devoted to winter, a recurring subject in her vocabulary alongside water and moon. Winter compositions typically rely on a restricted palette — pale grey, cold black, the unprinted white of [kozo](/glossary/kozo) paper — punctuated by passages of silver or aluminum leaf that read as snow, ice, or low winter light. The print likely employs deep embossing to introduce tactile relief in place of color, a strategy she used to render seasonal stillness without resorting to pictorial illustration. Iwami's woodblocks for winter works often combine large geometric fields with smaller, fragmented incised marks, producing surfaces the viewer reads as much by raking light as by pigment. The numbered title indicates her habit of working in series rather than isolated images, treating each composition as a variation on a sustained theme. Winter pieces sit within the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) turn toward pure abstraction that Onchi initiated and that Iwami carried into sculptural territory through her commitment to embossed, multi-block surfaces.