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Cunjurong Beach
copyright Tom Kristensen, 2004

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."

Cunjurong Beach - No. 1

"The Budawang tribe were the first indigenous people to be sighted by the British Captain James Cook in 1770. They may have stood here on Cunjurong Point and watched his ship The Endeavour pass by, as Cook set about charting and naming prominent geographical features. His was a voyage of scientific discovery and on board he had two botanists and an illustrator. The first botanist was Joseph Banks whose name has been given to a unique variety of Australian plants, which bear large woody fruits: the Banksia. In this first view we see the silhouette of Banksia integrifolia, the Coastal Banksia.

The second botanist was Daniel Solander a pupil of the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, the man who devised the system under which plants and animals are classified. Solander had the job of writing notes and storing the plant specimens collected. Today, his name is given to the Solander case, in which he kept the pressed plant specimens attached to sheets of paper. Art galleries and print collectors now use this type of box to store Japanese prints.

The voyage was a great success: more than 1400 plants and 1000 animals, most not known to science, were collected. On the advice of Joseph Banks New Holland was chosen as a suitable site for British expansion; a colony was established in 1788 and in 1824 the continent was renamed Australia."

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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