ART: WOODBLOCK PRINTS

 

Norma Bassett Hall, Old Sycamore, 1942

I have delighted in these since discovering Japanese prints from the Ukiyo-e Period. The Arts and Crafts Movement is another.  Peace, elegiac tone, quiet enjoyment, stylized posterizing, color that glows, a literary illustrational quality - all seem to be so much about who I am and what I love.

Tom Killion, Tundra,  1990's

Tom Killion, a living Northern California artist:

there’s something moving and sometimes garishly modern  in most of his work, but the balance between the dynamic,  the sensitive detail, and the lyric viewpoint is so stunning.  Also wonderful that the woodblock print is still being made.

Church - Rancho de Taos, 1919, Gustave Baumann

Baumann for me is the leading woodblock artist in the U.S. He settled in Taos where he found the picturesque and the magnificent imagery of his prints.  Small prints are available as cards, to my delight.