JULIAN LAFFAN, The Familiar Road, 2021, hand coloured woodcut 44.5 x 34.5 cm
Dimensions: 34.5 cm x 44.5 cm
The Familiar Road depicts a misty journey through the recovering landscape of the Clyde Mountain after recent fires and severe flooding events. The mountain contains thousand-year old trees and their regenerative survival within remnant rainforests appear as distant forms and shadows to the driver. Negotiating the damp air and the wet on the cut road the driver traces an ordinary journey through an extraordinary landscape on the way to the next station, Braidwood. The scale references the largest Japanese prints of the Meiji period that depict the way of the traveller along an ancient highway. This work employs the process of the woodcut to amplify the communicative presence of the tree as a material being in the world, emphasising the grain and the cut marks to reveal the timber beneath.
// Australia //
Image courtesy of the artist