Details

Tetsuya Noda’s Diary Feb 12th ’06 offers an elegant distillation of everyday presence rendered with grace and a contemplative stillness. At the heart of the composition, orchids—some open, some budding—are arranged in soft tonal gradations, partially desaturated against a radiant yellow ground. They hold a handwritten slip of paper like a whispered message—intimate and elusive—hinting at the print’s diaristic origin. As with much of Noda’s work, there is a quiet elegance in the balance of photographic exactitude and printmaker’s craft, where memory and moment meet in subtle accord.

Part of his lifelong Diary series, Noda’s prints serve as both documentation and meditation. By capturing everyday fragments—a flower, a note, a date—he transforms the mundane into lyrical reflections on time, seasonality, and transience. His approach echoes the Japanese aesthetic values of wabi-sabi and mono no aware, rooting the deeply personal in a shared awareness of impermanence. In this print, the orchids become both botanical study and metaphor for the fleeting beauty of lived experience.

Connoisseur's Note

The technical achievement behind this image lies in Noda’s seamless integration of traditional and contemporary techniques. A scanned photograph—translated into a finely registered silkscreen—is overlaid with the warm textures of hand-carved woodblocks. The subtle overlays and carefully modulated washes evoke the tactile softness of flesh and petal, while the silkscreen sharpens the detail of the handwritten note, giving the print its signature blend of immediacy and atmosphere.

This impression is a rare Artist’s Proof (A.P.), pulled outside the regular edition, often reserved for the artist’s own reference or for select collectors. Noda’s Diary works have been widely exhibited internationally and are held in major collections worldwide. Diary Feb 12th ’06 is emblematic of his most poetic mode: a singular day translated into a meditation on time, memory, and the intimacy of seeing.