Wildlands in woodblock: Using Japanese techniques, Tom Killion portrays the California landscape - Best of the West - Brief Article

Sunset, March, 2002 by Abigail Peterson

* In a single, fluid movement, printmaker Tom Killion turns a cylinder that draws a sheet of handmade Japanese paper through his German proofing press. It's near the end of a complex series of steps to create an original woodblock print.

Killion's specialty is the Western landscape--mainly California's coast and mountains. But what makes his work distinctive is his adaptation of traditional techniques developed by early-l9th-century Japanese print artists. The use of Japanese hand tools, for example, gives his work a refined simplicity and sharpness of line reminiscent of the classic Japanese prints that inspired French Impressionist Claude Monet.

"Tom has a wonderful ability to look both to the East and to the West," explains Kathleen Moodie of the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz, California. "What impresses me most, however, is how intimately he knows the terrain he represents. Instead of showing a mountain off in the distance, he gets up close, conveying the sense of what it's really like to be there."

Sketching the rugged California backcountry as he hikes, Killion spends weeks on the trail each year. To create a print, he transfers the detailed elements of his drawings onto a series of as many as 12 hand-carved wooden blocks. The scene is then printed block by block, with layers of color filling in the image like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The first block to be carved and the last one to be printed is the key block--a Japanese innovation--which lays down black on top of all the colors, giving final definition to each element.

The print shown here is one of the artist's favorites: the Big Sur coast in early summer. "This particular location is unique because you catch both redwoods and yuccas in one view. It's right at that transition point in climate and geography between Northern and Southern California," says Killion. "What I love most in this scene is its sense of movement-the way your eye is led along the redwood canyon to the sea. You feel like you're a bird swooping down the canyon, riding the thermals with the fog rolling in."