Cliara

Cliara is the Irish-language name for Clare Island, the mountainous island that closes the mouth of Clew Bay in County Mayo on Ireland's west coast — historically associated with the sixteenth-century chieftain Gráinne Ní Mháille. Working in aquatint and etching, Akino can render the island as a built-up mass of tonal grey against sky and sea, with the etched line reserved for ridge, weather, or the cliff edges where Cliara's profile sharpens. The aquatint ground, achieved by biting a rosin-dusted plate, supplies the sustained mid-tones of weather and water that her workshop register has favoured since the late 1990s. The print belongs to her continuing series of named Atlantic island and headland subjects, alongside Errigal, Slieve Foye, Scariff and Deenish, and the Dursey Island view. Made earlier than the more abstract 2024 group, the 2017 print stays close to topography: it is an image of a specific seen place, processed through the tonal aquatint that has been her dominant register since joining Graphic Studio Dublin in 1996.