Narcissos, Inspired by Marcus Enckel

Created in 2022, this print takes as its source the work of Magnus Enckell, a Finnish Symbolist painter associated with the early twentieth-century Nordic Symbolist movement who treated mythological and contemplative subjects with a characteristic cool palette and introspective mood. Narcissus — the figure from Ovid condemned to love his own reflection — is a subject particularly suited to Enckell's psychology of interiority. Moilanen's translation of Enckell's painted source into mokuhanga bridges two national traditions: Finnish Symbolism and Japanese printmaking. The reflective surface of water central to the Narcissus myth creates compositional opportunities for the doubled image, and mokuhanga's capacity for layered, translucent pigment application makes it suited to rendering both figure and reflection within a unified tonal field. [Bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations may dissolve the boundary between surface and depth, reinforcing the myth's confusion of reality and image.