A Wonder on the Way

The title suggests something glimpsed mid-journey — a quality that recurs in Akino's landscape work, where she tends to frame Irish topography as encountered rather than surveyed. Etched in line and worked over with aquatint, the print belongs to her unleafed 2022 group, in which the metallic surface is held back and the image relies on the intaglio plate alone. Akino's etching practice draws on the disciplined plate-handling she developed at Graphic Studio Dublin, where she has been a working studio member since 1996; the aquatint resist work gives her the gradated tonal fields that are recognisable across her body of work. The "way" is not specified in the title, but Akino's Cooley Peninsula subjects — Slieve Foye above Carlingford, the lough itself, the hills of County Louth — offer the most natural reading.