Villege of Horyu Temple in the Sunset Color 1942

Unichi Hiratsuka made this print of Horyu Temple bathed in the colours of the setting sun, but when I look at it, I'm wondering where the process starts. I love the stacked colours, how the blue seems to glow through the green, and how the ochre sits there below, grounding everything. See how the mark-making is clear and almost blocky, how the layers don't quite line up, and that's where the magic lives, in the process. The fields have these repetitive, almost frantic, marks, it makes me think about the labour of the land. And then those strange stacks, are they hay, or something else? It all seems so still, yet buzzing with a weird energy, like everything is on the verge of something. It has to be said that the Japanese printmakers, like Hiroshige, are clearly an influence here, but in a way, it reminds me of Avery, who also had this knack for flattening space and intensifying colour. Art is just a big conversation, right?