Storm Brewing - Kings Table

Kings Table is a rocky escarpment formation in the Northern Territory, and this print captures the atmospheric tension that precedes a Top End electrical storm building over such a landform. The composition likely places the distinctive plateau geology against a sky in active transformation — cumulus towers building, light changing from afternoon gold to a charged, diffuse grey-green. In mokuhanga, this kind of landscape-with-atmosphere demands careful management of multiple carved blocks: separate passages for the rock formation, the mid-ground scrub, and the layered sky, with [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations unifying the transitions. Gribbin's training in both English landscape tradition and Japanese woodblock printing gives her a double inheritance for this type of subject — the dramatic sky of English Romantic landscape painting and the compressed atmospheric horizon of Japanese [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) both inform how such a composition might be organised and tonally structured.