Artist inspiration and artist influences. No biographies, dates or scholarly research here - this is a personal response to the work of Edward Gorey by Australian artist Fiona Morgan.

It was an enjoyably sunny day some 10 years or more ago when I was being a tourist and wandering the streets of Palo Alto, California. I moseyed into the invitingly quirky looking Bell's Books and there discovered a stack or two of very curious books.

One was, 'The Epiplectic Bicycle'. Another, 'The Doubtful Guest'. There were others. All were written and illustrated in a most uncommon style by the rather talented Edward Gorey. I was delighted.

These very little books appealed instantly to my sense of the surreal. Such amusing absurdity. Such inventiveness. Such a consistently high standard. My admiration was immediate.

Stories from not very many words whatsoever. Sometimes with rhymes. Often with antiques of language. Always with pictures. What fun.

All from an artist who completely owns his own style. Ah the simplicity of pen and ink. I appreciate the stylistic intersection of cartooning and 18th century etching. Clever, that.

It continues! All the stories are set in Victorian/Edwardian times. It's part of the style. It's woven into the gloom with the gothic overtones. From the fancy dress, the tureens and fountains, gramaphones and elaborate wallpaper. As well as the antedeluvian linguistics.

Despite the tales being gruesome, perplexing and strange, I find they are also pervaded by a sense of calm and gentleness. How is this possible? More admiration.

 

There are many humourous children's books which I enjoy and sometimes collect for their pictures. Occasionally there are kid's books worth collecting for the witty exchange between their words and pictures. Dr Xargle's Book of Earth Hounds is a particular favourite. However I find it rare to encounter the level of intelligent play that all Gorey's books contain. It probably helps that his books were not actually written for kids. I imagine gripping the minds of tiny children and wittily amusing intelligent adults all at the same time is quite a tall order. Think of Gorey's books more as playful stories for adults. In fact, he is considered to be an author of the literary nonsense persuasion.

 

I now know that I have a taste for this 'literary nonsense'. Quite a taste. Think Lewis Carrol and Dr Seuss. I am certain this influence is going to rise to the surface in a big way in the future.

More Edward Gorey links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Gorey

http://www.edwardgoreyhouse.org

The Creative Cauldron series of posts explores and showcases the visual styles, techniques, attitudes, ideas, artists and paintings that have had the most impact on me. 

The rest of the series is accessible via the Creative Cauldron page. Have a meander if you please, and remember to check out my artworks on Flickr, and have an insider peek at life as an artist on Facebook.

Artist inspiration and artist influences. No biographies, dates or scholarly research here - this is a personal response to the work of Thelwell by Australian artist Fiona Morgan.

Once upon a time I was a horse mad girl without a horse. That changed, as in I got a horse, and then changed again to bring you up to now where I have neither horse nor huge interest in horses anymore, though I am still fond of them. So back to the horse mad era. While I was afflicted with this madness and still horseless I read every single book on horses and ponies that our local library had. Every. Single. One. Many of them were awful. Some of them were pure gold. Thelwell's books probably gave me more insight into the horse world than any other source.  He really nailed the characters of ponies and their riders and he could really, truly draw.

While I began reading Thelwell's books from a horse mad perspective, I kept reading them because this was a person who really knew how to observe humans and animals and the zany things we get up to, and then tease out just how silly we are being so that we laugh at ourselves. It really stayed with me that he could capture the essence of a situation and tell a story with a few well placed lines and an observant, witty mind.

I think this is what I enjoy about cartooning. There is no human photocopier in sight (those artists who just copy slavishly and emotionlessly). There is no extraneous detail. What I learned from reading Thelwell is that expressions, movement, energy and imagination are the things to focus on capturing in art. It's your interpretation that people are looking for, and in Thelwell's case, humour was his interpretation of what he saw and people loved his work for this exact quality.

More Thelwell links

Official Thelwell site

Wikipedia on Thelwell

I couldn't put this better myself and just had to include it. From The Bloghorn:

Thelwell is best remembered for his fat ponies and their long-suffering young riders, but he was a wide-ranging artist, who tackled many subjects for many papers and magazines, including Punch, with which he developed a close relationship over 25 years.

He had a strong understanding of the British character, and may be considered the post-war heir to Pont of Punch. From estate agents to battery farmers, hunt protesters to harassed motorists, Thelwell chronicled the minutiae of our (British) lives.

An accomplished landscape painter, Thelwell produced detailed, naturalistic settings for lively, comic figures that represent what he called, “the endearing lunacy of human behaviour”.

The Creative Cauldron series of posts explores and showcases the visual styles, techniques, attitudes, ideas, artists and paintings that have had the most impact on me. 

The rest of the series is accessible via the Creative Cauldron page. Have a meander if you please, and remember to check out my artworks on Flickr, and have an insider peek at life as an artist on Facebook.

Artist inspiration and artist influences. No biographies, dates or scholarly research here - this is a personal response to the work of author Alan Garner by Australian artist Fiona Morgan.

No, not a visual artist this time. A writer. A wordsmith. A poet. Many of you will be familiar with the work of Alan Garner. The author of 'Elidor', 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen', 'The Stone Book Quartet' and 'The Owl Service' (probably my favourite of his), among others.

Through the unimaginative categorizing of literature, this lucid poet has generally been labeled a children's author. This is simply not true. What he does so brilliantly is to take the ancient stories that are tied to the places that his family has inhabited for at least 400 years and breathe life into them for people not from those places who live today.

He is a mythmaker.

And that is the main reason I admire what he does.

This mythmaker is a craftsman who works with words. He manipulates time, consciousness, atmosphere, fables and intertwines stories. His words are as pared down as possible and yet they speak on many levels. There is a new weaving of reality. There is always depth and the utmost of integrity to his writing.

What he does in words is what I, one day, want to do in pictures.

Here's Alan Garner the person, telling the story of how he recognized an irreplaceable antique find. This is the storyteller at work, in this case relating a tale that is entirely true. I love how, by including the most ordinary of details of personal experience, this becomes a story that could have happened to any of us. It is made so easy to relate to.

The most compelling of all his writings to me so far has been Alan Garner's collection of essays and lectures. 'The Voice That Thunders' is stunning in what it illuminates so poetically and clearly. Bipolar. An attack of a negative engram. The perplexing responses to his books. How a book writes itself through him. The other world of the ceiling. This book is one of the few books I keep rereading.

More Alan Garner links

http://andrew.dale.free.fr/favourites/garner.htm

http://www.ericawagner.co.uk/journalism.php?section=journalism2&id=7

The Creative Cauldron series of posts explores and showcases the visual styles, techniques, attitudes, ideas, artists and paintings that have had the most impact on me. 

The rest of the series is accessible via the Creative Cauldron page. Have a meander if you please, and remember to check out my artworks on Flickr, and have an insider peek at life as an artist on Facebook.