Having being inspired to “document the landscape” by the works of Frans Krajcberg, I have also been looking at the work of Bryan Nash Gill. Pat Rosoff, an art critic for the Hartford Advocate describes him as”… not simply a naturalist, he is an artist rooted in nature, he draws his vocabulary from the world of New England’s woods.” Gill records his connection to the world using a variety of media, including installation, monotypes, sculpture and printing from nature. Although he doesn’t mention Gyotaku, he uses the same technique of inking or painting objects then rubbing with his fingers over paper to make a print.
One of Bryan Nash Gill’s beautiful prints
Having spotted some logs and tree stumps on my walk along the banks of the Tay at West Kinfauns near Perth, I decided that I would carry a couple of them home and have a go at printing from them. This would be another element of this part of the landscape which I could include, along with the Hogweed, the tree knots, the dyes, plants and possibly the sand, stones, driftwood and water.
I found a video of Bryan Nash Gill on youtube, in which he talks about his work and his relationship with nature and trees and it also gave me a glimpse of him sanding the logs and burning them with a blow torch before printing them.
I decided to use the same preparation methods with the logs which I had found :
Sanding one of the logs which I found on my walk near the Tay
I inked the logs up using oil-based relief printing ink from TN Lawrence. I decided to use white (surprise surprise!) and to print onto ivory coloured handmade paper.
I started with the smaller more circular log slice, and was very pleased with the result. I took a few prints incase I wanted to try to alter them or use them within experiments later on.
Below: A successful result!
Next I tried the larger sliced log…
Antidotal Recall 