Description

Winchester Geese #1 is a handmade Mokuhanga print created in my Winchester studio, produced as a limited edition of twenty. This work signals a transition in my practice away from geometric symbolism and toward a more intuitive abstraction informed by my Art Therapy training. Rather than beginning with predetermined forms, the composition emerges from embodied experience, memory, and a more fluid engagement with materials.

It draws on the memory of walks from my studio along the River Itchen into Winchester and up towards St Catherine’s Hill, with the portrait orientation of the piece possibly reflecting the ascent of the hill itself. These walks act as a somatic archive: impressions of movement, rhythm, light, and shifting terrain that resurface when I return to the studio. Working with water-based pigments, I allow unconscious memory to guide the emergence of shape and seasonal colour. The layers of colour are deliberately subtle, and intentionally calibrated to be gentle on the eye. As an art therapist working in clinical environments, I also envision this work functioning within therapeutic spaces, where visual softness can support emotional ease.

A loose sumi-e (black ink) line moves through the composition, sometimes suggesting the memory of the walk, sometimes acting as a connective thread that holds the abstracted shapes in balance. This gesture provides contrast to the softly modulated hirazumi (flat) colour fields, anchoring the work in both spontaneity and structure.

The print employs a reduction-printing approach across three carved woodblocks, re-carving them partway through the process to create two distinct depths of colour. This method intensifies the sense of layered memory within the work. Because of the nature of Mokuhang, specifically the behaviour of water-based pigments and dampened paper, the printing window is limited to approximately three days, requiring careful planning, steady repetitive pacing, immersive intuition, and sustained engagement with the evolving surface and printing process.

Winchester Geese #1 reflects a practice grounded in place, movement, and therapeutic sensibility, where abstraction, memory, and the materiality of Mokuhanga come together to create a gentle, contemplative visual field.