Q&A: Tom Killion

Lake Tahoe from Maggies Peaks, Desolation Wilderness (13.5x17 inches), by Tom Killion

By Dale Conour

Tom Killion is one of California’s most beloved artists. I realize that may harbor negative connotations— after all, unless you’re wielding puns dangerously, you’d never refer to his work as "cutting edge." But you could pull out the overused "timeless" here without shame. The master woodcarver and printer has been capturing the wilds and not so wilds of California and beyond for decades, and by capture I mean not only their likenesses, but more importantly as artistic work, their more elusive characters. It’s worth spending a few minutes on his site to learn more of his rich personal history, and his technique.

Q: How has woodcutting impacted your relationship with the outdoors, with nature?

A: Printmaking hasn't much impacted my time outdoors, other than it perhaps makes me do more sketching. On the other hand, I did a lot more watercolors and finished drawings in my youth, before I really accepted printmaking as my only "finished" artistic production. One thing printmaking does is it makes me "take apart" landscape scenes in my mind, contemplating how many color blocks and various split-fountain rolls and reduction-cuts it would take to get a particular scene look the way I wanted it. When I am actually "woodcarving" (your Q) I am in my studio, not outdoors. I do all my work from sketches made in the open however, so the sketching process gets me to spend time, between 20 minutes and an hour usually, "meditating" on the landscape—which is nice.

Big Arroyo, Foxtail Pines (10x12.5 inches), by Tom Killion

Q: How does your chosen art form allow itself to be pushed by the artist? What are the boundaries?

A: I like printmaking for several reasons: First, it forces me to abstract the landscape to some degree, as I must reverse the image, carve it into wood or linoleum for a "Key" bloc and then use that block as template for a number of color blocks, all carved in reverse as well. The reassembly of the landscape takes place while I am printing, layer upon layer of color. Otherwise, as one can tell by looking at my work, I would be too "literal" an artist and my landscapes would look very prosaic.

Second, I can romanticize the world into another time and place—maybe a place like pre-modern Japan in the time of the Ukiyo-e "floating world" aesthetic of the early 19th century, when people were smaller on the land, and more in harmony with it. It is kind of hard loving the visual landscape of central California in the late 20th and 21st century and seeing it violated and abused on such a massive scale by us humans. So my art allows me to remake the world the way I like to see it, to some degree—although I do not entirely remove the human element (my Ukiyo-e mentors taught me this lesson, as they always kept the human element as well).

The City from Grizzly Peak (14x17 inches), by Tom Killion

Boundaries in woodcut printmaking mostly have to do with the flatness of the printed surface and the hardness of the edge of the line—to get soft and fluid effects, clouds, mist, water, reflections etc. are the great challenges—but that is why it remains continually interesting as a medium. Far more challenging than painting, for example, when it comes to landscapes.

Q: By creating works interpreting places that are not only known, but held dear, by so many people, do you ever worry that your art is appealing to viewers for reasons of sentimentality as much as for the aesthetic quality of the pieces?

A: Perceptive Q.—I have heard so many people tell me they are buying a print because it depicts a scene dear to them—it is extraordinary to find how important some places are in people’s lives—childhood haunts, marriage proposals, weddings, ashes scattered, it runs the gamut of peoples lives—but I rarely choose places b/c I think they might appeal to others, it is b/c they appeal to ME.

Yosemite Valley II (11.5x16 inches), by Tom Killion

The most charismatic landscapes have universal appeal of course. I have one view of Yosemite Valley from the Wawona Rd. Tunnel—the classic view—I really hesitated to make a print of it, it has become such a trope,  but it truly is one of the more stunning scenes nature offers, and lends itself so well to the medium of woodcut. So I did it anyway.

I know if I only did tourist sites and "flowers above the sea" I would make a lot more money, but I don’t—if you look at my website you’ll see most of my scenes are actually off the beaten path. I do love fields of poppies and lupines above the sea, one of the loveliest features of our old California land, but I try to only do them every few years, almost out of resistance to the general love of them.

Bolinas Ridge to Pt. Montara (Gulf of the Farallons), (14x18.5 inches), by Tom Killion

In the end however, the exciting part of printmaking is the overlay and juxtaposiiton of colors and patterns, and the subject could be almost anything. Sometimes I turn my prints upside down and just enjoy the color/texture mixes; and if they delight me upside down or sideways, I feel like I really got it right. Oddly, the ones that work best for me on this purely abstract level are also some of my most popular images.

Greenwood Cove, Mendocino Coast (11x14.5 inches), by Tom Killion

Q: As an artist, when you see strangers out in the world, do the ways they interact with the world ever frustrate you? Inspire you?

A: I am as critical of people as anyone else, especially as  a fourth gen. Northern Californian. I particularly dislike bulldozers and roadcutters, but I also dislike ornamental invasive plant planters and eco-Nazis who would rather have coyote-brush everywhere instead of the beautiful wildflower grasslands that we have inherited from 200 years of ranching and 6,000 years of Native Californian burning. All power to grazers and old Indian women who burned the meadows for their brodaea fibers! There are few landscapes in the world more beautiful than the central CA oak-savannah steep hillside grasslands juxtaposed w/ redwood forest canyons and mixed bay, madrone, fir mountainsides. Keep California free, join the CNPS and Ventana Wilderness Coalition, but tell them to work to keep our grasslands open.

Where I live now, out in West Marin, provides a great example of what can be done to mix sustainable ranching with grassland preservation—it is really beautiful and it works. The model should be expanded, but instead the National Park service is a slave to bizarre ideas of "wilderness" where wilderness never existed since the last Ice Age. Let’s rethink people in the landscape—we are here, we belong here—but in a sustainable relationship, not in this dualistic, all-or-nothing false dichotomy that wilderness bureaucrats (can such a monster really exist?) seem to believe they are mandated to create.

Addis Abeba (8.5x9.25 inches), by Tom Killion

Links: Tom Killion’s website, California Native Plant Society, Ventana Wilderness Coalition

Let’s stay in touch.