Paul Binnie: Sankeien Gardens 三渓園

Artist: Paul Binnie (Born 1967) Title: Sankeien Gardens 三渓園 Date: 2005 Winter view of the classic Japanese garden Sankeien in Yokohama. With embossed footprints in the snow in the foreground and mica on the edge of the frozen pond. Best to allow the artist to speak for himself: “As you may know, I have been working on a series of landscape woodblock prints called Nihon Meisho Zu-e (Famous Views of Japan), of which three have been released already; Aka Fuji, Miyajima No Torii and Himeji Castle. I have now completed the fourth in the series, Sankeien, which is a view of the famous Sankeien Gardens in Yokohama in the snow. I visited the garden in April of 2004, and of course it was cherry blossom time, which was extremely beautiful, but unfortunately Yoshida Hiroshi did a view of these very gardens with cherry blossom (Abe #191), so I decided to use some artistic license and make it a snow scene, in shades of blue, lilac and grey-green, which tones well with the horizonal image of Himeji