Sand Currents

An abstract mokuhanga in which the subject is the patterning left by retreating tide on a wet strand — the meandering channels, ripple sets, and braided runoff that briefly map a beach before the next tide erases them. Worked from cherry or shina blocks and printed in water-based pigment on washi, the image relies on flat, layered color fields and bokashi gradients to register the shifts between dry sand, saturated sand, and standing water. The mokuhanga vocabulary, with its softened edges where pigment migrates into the dampened sheet, suits a motif that is itself defined by edges in the act of dissolving. Early's coastal practice generally fixes its attention on the structured edge between built form and moving sea — lighthouses, harbor walls, slipways — and Sand Currents reads as the same boundary inverted, with the sea's drawing taking the place of the architecture. It also reflects her wider engagement with Japanese water-based woodblock, learned and practiced at Graphic Studio Dublin alongside her intaglio work.