For my 28th birthday my sister Alison gave me a number of gifts (she is very generous) but the one that will always stand out in my memory is the beautiful book pictured above that she found in a charity shop on Mansfield Road, Sherwood, Nottingham. This book has changed my life! When I took my first glance inside, it felt as if someone had been peeking at my 'wish list' and dreamed up my ultimate book! Creepy tales and creepy pictures for the girl with a wicked sense of humor that loves the scent of a well journeyed book - perfect!
The Five Fables from France by Lee Cooper offers dreamy stories of caution, the titles alone give you a wonderful hint at what is to emerge:
The Girl Who Played a Trick on the Devil
The Three Butchers from Reims
The Wolf in the Ram's Skin
The Strange Feathery Beast
The Midget and the Giant
This book has been with me for eight years now and each visit inside it yields so much inspiration and so much pleasure, pure escapism! I am currently trying to piece together ideas for a series of live performances that I hope to carry out during 2011 and this book has been at the centre of inspiration for that. I will talk more about the details when I have further clarity myself. In the mean time, here are some of the illustrations that appear in the book by the very wonderful Charles Keeping, who has generously nourished me over the years and continues to feed my soul with his depictions of other worldly creatures.
Inner Sleeve
The Strange Feathery Beast
The Strange Feathery Beast
The Midget and the Giant
The Girl Who Played a Trick on the Devil
The Girl Who Played a Trick on the Devil
The Wolf in the Ram's Skin
The Wolf in the Ram's Skin
I came across these drawings of mine today that were in an old journal from my uni years around 1997. It was a journal that I kept for ideas to develop in Printmaking. It is so useful now to look back on all these records as evidence of my interests and of my creative journey. I despise the idea of time being wasted or of efforts going unseen and that is the reason I am so glad that I have found a format in which to share all these fragments of my 'bigger' picture.
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