IMC 2024 Echizen submission

Submitted to the International Mokuhanga Conference's Echizen exhibition in 2024, this print engages with the showcase's central concern: the interplay between traditional Japanese washi and contemporary mokuhanga practice. The IMC's Echizen component invites participating artists to work directly on or in dialogue with paper produced in Fukui Prefecture's thousand-year-old papermaking villages, foregrounding the substrate as both surface and subject. Kean's contribution continues the abstract, tonally layered approach that has characterized her mokuhanga since her 1985 studies in Tokyo, employing bokashi gradations and successive baren impressions to build atmospheric fields rather than representational imagery. Her submissions to international mokuhanga forums typically explore the resonance of overlapping translucent layers, allowing the fibrous texture and warm tone of the washi to remain visible through restrained pigment application. Within her four-decade body of work, this print represents her sustained engagement with the conference circuit that has connected Australian, Japanese, and international practitioners since the IMC's founding in 2011, situating her practice within the global revival of traditional water-based woodblock printmaking.