Sunbeams Filtering Through the Leaves

木洩れ日 (komorebi) is the Japanese word for the dappled light that falls when sun passes through tree foliage — a phenomenon rather than an object, and a difficult subject to print because what must be rendered is the absence of leaf-shadow at irregular intervals against shadow elsewhere. Takeda's likely approach is to lay an aquatint base for the shaded ground or undergrowth and then lift or stop out the bright passages so the light reads as paper rather than as ink. Soft-ground etching can hold the lacy edge of leaf-cast outlines without the rigidity of a hard-ground line. Chine-collé under the plate gives the highlighted areas a slight luminosity that helps them register as light rather than as blank space. The work falls within her recurring forest-interior subject, alongside Abyss of the Forest from 2019, but where that print treats the depth of woodland this one treats its surface — the same kind of place at a different time, lit. Editions of this period are thirty impressions.