Vortex
Monoprint, Watercolor on Rives paper
Year: 2025
Size: 40x32 (36x28) inch
This work originates from a childhood memory of the whirlpools I witnessed in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi, Japan. Even after many years, the constantly shifting and rotating movement of the water remains in my memory as a fragmentary image.
In creating this piece, I adopted the spit-bite aquatint technique to explore whether the fluidity that characterizes my monoprint practice could be translated into the medium of etching. Utilizing tonal variations and subtle blurring created through the etching process and the wiping of ink, I sought to evoke the unstable energy and cyclical motion generated by flowing water.
Rather than depicting a specific landscape, the work functions as a trace of memory transformed through the passage of time. The vortex is both a natural phenomenon and a metaphor for memory itself—a process through which images emerge, disappear, and resurface, continually shifting between presence and absence.