Sweet Dreams

This 2016 print combines figural and abstract elements in a dreamlike composition that suggests the fluid boundary between waking and sleeping states. Mokuhanga's water-based technique, which produces soft edges where pigment blooms slightly into dampened [washi](/glossary/washi), is well suited to imagery that deliberately blurs representation and abstraction. Moilanen may employ partially dissolved figural forms emerging from or dissolving into fields of soft color, using the technique's inherent tendency toward luminous color saturation rather than sharp line. The 2016 date places this work within a period of active formal experimentation. The subject continues a tradition in Japanese printmaking of using the medium's optical qualities to render interior or psychological states rather than external description.