Journey Without Goal

Journey Without Goal is an intaglio print combining etching with applied silver leaf, a pairing Akino has refined across two decades at Graphic Studio Dublin. The title draws on a contemplative idea familiar from Zen and Mahayana Buddhist thought — movement understood as practice rather than as transit toward an endpoint — and resonates with the artist's own trajectory between Kyoto and the Cooley Peninsula. Etched line typically carries the structural drawing in her work, while aquatint provides the tonal field; the silver leaf is then laid into selected passages, where it reads as water, mist, or reflected light depending on the angle of viewing. Within Akino's body of work, this 2019 plate sits among her travel and landscape subjects rather than her more figurative kimono prints, and shares the meditative register of pieces such as her Carlingford Lough and Errigal etchings. The use of metal leaf links her European intaglio practice to the Japanese decorative tradition of kinpaku and ginpaku grounds seen on screens and scrolls, an east–west pairing that runs throughout her Graphic Studio Dublin output.