Poppy No 10

The tenth entry in Sugiura Kazutoshi's poppy series applies his distinctive layered printmaking approach to the keshi — a flower whose translucent, tissue-thin petals pose unique challenges to a printmaker working with dense, accumulative layers of pigment. The poppy's ephemerality, its papery petals that last only days before falling, has given it associations in Japanese poetry with transience and the pathos of beauty (mono no aware). Sugiura's technique renders these delicate petals through a paradox: their apparent lightness is achieved through multiple heavy layers of overprinted silkscreen ink and gold-leaf application.