The Heart of the Matter

The Heart of the Matter returns Akino to mokuhanga, the Japanese water-based woodblock technique she would have first encountered during her early printmaking training in Kyoto. The print is hand-pulled with a baren onto washi, with pigments suspended in nori paste rather than the oil-based inks of her usual copper-plate practice. The contemplative title gestures toward an inward-facing image rather than the topographical work she is better known for. Within Akino's wider output the piece sits as a deliberate counterweight to the etchings: where a copper plate is bitten and incised, mokuhanga is cut and printed in flat colour fields, often with bokashi gradations worked along the edges of each block. As a Graphic Studio Dublin member since 1996 Akino has built her career around intaglio, so a 2020 mokuhanga marks a deliberate return to her Kyoto-trained roots.