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Tom Kristensen

The Lookout
copyright Tom Kristensen, 2005

Tom Kristensen, born 1962, is a young artist from Australia who works in the tradition of Japanese woodblock printmaking. On this page, he writes about his latest print from the series "36 Views of Green Island ".

Here is the original text written by Tom Kristensen. Text and images are copyright protected and may not be used or distributed for other than private use without the prior consignment of the author/artist.

36 Views of Green Island

"These 36 views are presented in the Sosaku Hanga tradition: self-carved and hand printed, using Japanese tools, Japanese mulberry washi and traditional pigment colours. Each print is made from 4 to 6 blocks and printed in an edition of 25 copies."

The Lookout - No. 11

"In this print I have touched on the use of western technique in the Japanese print. In the 1820s a new type of Prussian blue pigment was introduced from Europe to Japan. There followed a twenty-year craze for prints done almost exclusively in shades of blue. These aizuri-e were pictures of landscapes, fûkei-ga, and pictures of beautiful women, bijin-ga. Western conventions of realistic representation were also introduced when Japanese artists began to see printed pictures bought from Europe.

The Japanese style was rich in flowing lines, textile patterns and areas of flat colour. There was usually a limited sense of depth to the picture, and figures were highly decorated and two-dimensional.

The Western style had perspective based on the use of the vanishing point and volume created through light and shade, chiaroscuro.

The Japanese were quick to adopt perspective in pictures of buildings, known as uki-e. They were less inclined to chiaroscuro. It is early morning and Madeleine stretches while checking the surf from a lookout high on the headland. I have used chiaroscuro to suggest the rising sun over the island. The blue bokashi is used to give shape to her torso. The post and rail of the lookout are seen in perspective. The heavy timber grain was created by replicating the structure in miniature from soft cedar timber glued to a printing block. The ocean is not illustrated, but is still the focus of the view."

Tom Kristensen
April 2005

More about Tom Kristensen

The artist was first discovered by Eric van den Ing, co-author of a classic ukiyo-e book "Beauty and Violence" and owner of Saru Gallery. After Eric van den Ing had placed Tom's woodblock prints on his online gallery, a few days later a collector had bought the whole set. Mr. van den Ing seems to have a "magic hand" for new artists. He was the first to introduce Paul Binnie in 2000 to a larger online community of friends of Japanese prints.

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