Tom Killion was born and raised in Mill Valley, California, on the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais. The rugged scenery of Marin County and Northern California inspired him from an early age to create landscape prints using linoleum and wood. He is influenced by the Japanese artists, Hokusai and Hiroshige, and using Japanese carving tools, he creates wood and linoleum block prints of landscape images he has first sketched on site.
Killion was in his late teens when he first hand printed illustrations for books, and only 21 when he merged text and image to complete Twenty-Eight Views of Mount Tamalpais, celebrating the mountains that visually dominated his early life in Mill Valley, California. Since then, he has completed many projects, including Walls: A Journey Across Three Continents – a blend of text from his travel journals, carefully selected handmade paper, and prints of European and African scenes. Tom has also collaborated with Pulitzer prize-winning poet, Gary Snyder, to create hand-printed, large-format books, "The High Sierra of California" and "Tamalpais Walking". He currently works in his studio near Point Reyes, California.
