Carol Wilhide Justin ARE

Carol Wilhide Justin is an artist-printmaker who specialises in Japanese woodcut. Time-consuming to produce, woodcuts are built up in a slow, exacting process, one layer at a time. In a world increasingly driven by the digital, Carol’s work celebrates the abiding value of the haptic and analogue.

Carol derives her inspiration from the natural world, the interplay of light and shade, and the mutability of time, movement, and memory. Carol’s woodcut prints seek to capture these fleeting moments of change. This is reflected in her subdued choice of colour.

Carol was awarded a residency at the MI-LAB studio, Fujikawaguchiko, Japan, in 2014 where she was taught the mokuhanga technique by Japanese sensei. On her return to the UK she gained a place at the Royal College of Art graduating with an MA in Print in 2017.

Japanese Woodcut is her main art practice and she teaches Mokuhanga to adult students in London at Morley College, The Art Academy and the City Literary Institute. She is also an accredited lecturer with the Arts Society.

Her woodcuts are cut with traditional Japanese tools, and hand-printed with a baren. The use of water-based pigments, instead of the more traditional Western oil-based inks, allows for a more nuanced print, displaying the shifting variables of woodgrain and water.