Glasgow-based artist Stuart Hammond spent several years studying Japanese woodblock prints of the late Edo & early Meiji periods and was fortunate to be able to examine in detail many thousand from the collections of the British Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, & the Ritsumeikan University.

These images have long had an influence on western art, inspiring different uses of compositional space, flattening of planes, and abstract approaches to colour along with an emphasis on diagonals, asymmetry, and negative space. They have inspired artists as varied as Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Klimt and Rennie Mackintosh.