Tulips (2009)

Mokulito etching on paper.

Oksana Stratiychuk was born in 1968 in Kiev, Ukraine. She is an artist and printmaker who graduated from The National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in 1992 and completed her postgraduate studies at the Ukrainian Academy of Arts in 1996. She is one of the finest draftswomen in Europe and a master of the rare art of Mokulito (‘wood lithography’ in Japanese) printing of which this picture is one of her most charming examples.

The mokulito print was originated in Japan in the 1970s by Ozaku Schisi. Like all lithographic techniques, mokulito relies on the fact that water and oil do not mix. As in traditional lithography, the image is drawn using greasy inks and crayons onto the printing matrix or plate yet in mokulito the plate is made of an organic substance: wood. As a result the image changes slightly each time the plate is printed and degrades relatively quickly, meaning that editions are small and variable, with results depending on factors such as the species and age of the particular piece of wood and the weather.

Stratiychuk’s artworks are found in the collections of National Museum of History of Ukraine, National Museum of Folk Applied Art, National Museum Kyiv Picture Gallery, Odessa State Art Museum, Chernivtsi State Art Museum