Carol Wilhide Justin is an artist-printmaker and graduate of the RCA 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. While the starting point for a print may be one of her own drawings or digital photographs, translating the image into a woodcut involves a deliberate and decisive reinterpretation of the subject, so that it is transformed in an atmospheric and emotional way, one that embodies the passage of time. This is reflected in her subdued choice of colour.

In 2014 Carol was awarded a residency at the MI-LAB studio, Fujikawaguchiko, Japan, where she was taught the mokuhanga technique by Japanese sensei. 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.