Fuego
$400.00
SOLD
Artist: Jacquie Sullivan
Medium: Mokuhanga (Japanese water-based woodblock print)
Artist Statement:
I began working on this print during my residency at the Taller Radal printmaking studio in the Patagonian Andes of Argentina. In the first week of my stay I hiked up the local mountain, Cerro Catedral, passing through an area overlooking Lago Gutiérrez that featured many burnt trees. My host Marta di Bitteti told me about the fire that had swept across that mountainside in 1997, endangering her home and destroying 700 acres of forest – a forest composed mostly of invasive pine trees, planted by colonizers, whose cones shot like grenades carrying hot embers far & wide. It was the largest ecological disaster in Argentina’s history up to that point. I learned there were suspicions that the fires that burned then – and that were burning 30, 000 hectares of forest during my visit to her studio in Patagonia this year – were the result of arson, an effort to push the indigenous Mapuche people from their land which has been deemed desirable for development. My attention was initially captured by the beauty of the shapes of those burnt trees, frozen in time, and making this print served as a memento of my visit to Argentina and my learning about the natural & colonial histories of Patagonia. The tree here acts as witness, holding within its burnt body the trauma inflicted on the land and its people, the memory of which still lingers in the minds of the human survivors who watch with despair as history repeats itself with ever more frequency. As the foreign observer, far from my home, I saw both beauty & tragedy in the burnt landscape and felt connected to it by the knowledge that Canada too is plagued with many of the same problems, with similar circumstances yet its own unique differences playing out through climate change, capitalism & colonialism. It divides us and yet also brings us together as the vulnerable living creatures who call this planet home. This mokuhanga print was created by hand-carving two blocks of hard Lenga wood, indigenous to Tierra del Fuego in Southern Argentina, as well as an additional three blocks of Shina plywood from Japan, where I first learned this process and met my friend Marta. I chose to make this print monochromatic, using Sumi ink of varying dilutions with water to heighten the sense of memory and create a smoky atmosphere. 13 hand-printed impressions were taken from the 5 wood blocks using a bamboo baren, utilizing the traditional Japanese printing techniques of mokumezuri (a subtle wood grain in the sky), betazuri (flat colour), gomazuri (sesame seed texture, here used to represent foliage) & bokashi (gradients) to add contrast and depth to the image. I also applied a water-based varnish to the woodblock bearing the tree to create tonal values and to enhance the texture of the burnt bark, and I embossed the moon for added dimension. “Fuego” means “fire” in Spanish.
Artist Biography:
Jacquie Sullivan (b. 1978) grew up in Uxbridge, Ontario and studied Fine Art at the University of Windsor and University of Guelph. She later earned a Bachelor of Education at UOIT (Oshawa) but stepped away from her career as a French Immersion teacher to rededicate her time to developing her art.
Sullivan has always been an observer, noticing the things that are often overlooked. Studying and making art have refined how she sees the world, encouraging deep reflection about her experience of living in it. Since 2020 Sullivan has maintained an art practice largely focused on relief printmaking, working out of her home studio in Whitby to create hand-printed linocut, woodcut and letterpress prints. She makes works on paper, greeting cards and block-printed textiles inspired by moments in nature, travel memories and the power of words. Her work is driven by feelings of awe, gratitude and hope, the sharing of which offers her a great sense of purpose. Through both her work and the printmaking workshops she teaches, Sullivan strives to help others slow down, to reconnect with their own memories & present selves and to appreciate the world around them more fully.
Sullivan is drawn to the physicality of printmaking, which requires all her attention and presence during the
creative process. She finds it meditative to work in reverse, purposefully carving away what she doesn’t want
to be printed. The careful, handmade undertaking of printing multiples from a raised surface requires a strong attention to detail, and she finds the many opportunities for variations and combining techniques
exciting.
In the spring of 2025 Sullivan received a Canada Council for the Arts Professional Development for Artists
Grant to study mokuhanga (Japanese water-based woodblock printmaking) at the Mokuhanga Innovation
Laboratory (MI-Lab) in Echizen, Japan. In 2026 she continues to develop her skills in this environmentally
friendly printmaking process, beginning the year with a self-directed residency at Taller Radal printmaking
studio in Villa los Coihues, Patagonia, Argentina.
Sullivan is thrilled to have realized her earlier interests in sculpture & painting have joined forces with
printmaking in the form of mokuhanga. For someone most inspired by landscape, she feels there is such
beauty in the direct connection to nature achieved by using water, wood & washi (handmade Japanese paper) to make mokuhanga prints. She’s enamoured by the atmospheric quality of water-based pigments printed onto damp washi, the two materials becoming luminously one, and has discovered she needs to be part artist & part scientist to make this kind of work – creating a careful plan, methodically testing her theories, taking meticulous notes and making adjustments to both carving & printing in order to inch towards a final image that does justice to the original inspiration. It’s a thoughtful process that cannot be rushed.
