An artist sitting at a table filled with paint supplies, including brushes and paint containers, while smiling and working on a wooden canvas.
- Image courtesy of
- Artist website (Shoichi Kitamura)
The print depicts an artist seated at a worktable laid with brushes and pigment containers, working on a wooden surface. The scene functions as a self-reflexive document of mokuhanga practice, showing the printmaker at the moment of brushing color onto a block — the stage that distinguishes Japanese water-based woodblock printing from oil-based Western relief printing, where ink is rolled rather than applied with a brush. Kitamura, who works in the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) tradition of self-designed, self-carved, and self-printed blocks, returns at intervals across his body of work to images of the studio itself. The smiling figure suggests a portrait, possibly a self-portrait or a commemorative image of a fellow printmaker. The presence of multiple pigment containers indicates a multi-block, multi-color print in progress: each color in a finished mokuhanga sheet typically requires its own carved block, registered against a [kento](/glossary/kento) mark cut into one corner.
An artist sitting at a table filled with paint supplies, including brushes and paint containers, while smiling and working on a wooden canvas. was created by Shoichi Kitamura (北村昭一).
