Artist Karen Riley once surprised a suibokuga (ink painting) master by showing more interest in the back of the paper he was working on than the design itself.
This back-to-front view of beauty can be appreciated in a show of Riley's works at Kamakura's Yumematsudo Gallery. Her work could be described as postmodernist, but in the Japanese context, it is more post-traditional.
Exuberantly colored and richly textured, Riley's prints suggest the visions that flash before our eyes on first awaking -- a preconscious revelation of the joy of being alive.
Riley's medium is monoprint, where ink colors are painted onto a plate and transferred to paper using an etching press. Why not paint directly onto the paper? Because only with monoprint can layers of color be applied or partially removed, variable densities of etching ink be used and textures offset onto the paper. Prints pass through the press up to 30 times.
Some color layers are partially scraped away, and the resulting layered effect is reminiscent of those old walls in Nara where the construction techniques of different centuries stand out like geological strata. Some of the superimposed marks are made with kimono stencils Riley found in neglected corners of antique shops. Others are obtained by offsetting ink from tracing to etching paper.
Riley is hands-on throughout the process -- in monoprint, unlike some printmaking media, the artist and the colorist are one. The true challenge lies, Riley says, in "creating something that lifts off the page."