Evening Meadow

Evening Meadow is a non-metallic serigraph in Shimura's meadow series, relying entirely on flat chromatic separations rather than reflective inks to build its dusk atmosphere. Without a metal key to anchor the image, the print's tonal weight shifts onto a graded sky and a foreground band of grass rendered in cool greens, lavenders, or grey-blues — the kind of restrained palette that postwar Japanese silkscreen printmakers used to evoke time of day through hue alone. Shimura's compositional armature is consistent across the meadow prints: a low horizon line, a generous expanse of sky occupying two-thirds or more of the sheet, and a narrow but textured foreground stratum implied through a small number of carefully overlaid screens. Evening Meadow likely uses no more than five to seven color passes, each cut as a flat stencil, to produce its sense of dusk light. The print sits in the artist's quieter, more pared-back register, free of the metallic flourishes that characterize his Fantasy and Fantasia editions.