DEIDRE VAILL

Mokuhanga or Japanese woodblock printing is a process that is more than a process, it is a history lesson. The materials, paper, woodblock, and tools, tell their own story of the development of printing in Japan . I have made my own brushes and baren in the traditional Japanese method, and I grind my pigments and use use traditional tools. I mostly use Japanese paper or washi.I am interested in the variations in texture and colour that can be obtained. Hand printing allows me to actually feel my way through the print process using different papers, different moisture of the block and paper, and different barens, to produce a variety of marks. The simplicity of the resultant image belies the complexity of the process of the printing.My images tend to be of objects and scenes that have captured my imagination because of their shape, texture or colour, but need to be conveyed in recognisable form. This means I am rather a bowerbird, collecting images, but like the bowerbird I try to weave them together into a coherent whole.