Wednesday, 12 January 2011

Mermaids and Brambles

FREDRICKSBURG, Va -- So over the past few months, I completed the Mermaid's Song series and recently delivered it to my webmaster to update the official webpage (www.loimestudios.com) and that should be coming soon.
I gathered so many great literary resources and great images to use with the series I decided to do another series of mermaid illustrations as well, centered around the Ted Hughes poetry book, "The Mermaid's Purse," from which one was included in the "Mermaid's Song" series. The new series has gone well, and will hopefully be ready to go to the printers by my March deadline.
In the meantime though, during a recent trip which precluded me from taking the larger illustrations, inks and brushes, I began an illumination series based on Ronan O'Snodaigh's "Garden Wars." The poetry collection follows the personification of the inhabitants of a garden as they struggle toward survival and was a brilliant collection. Designed as illuminations to the poems, they are being dropped off at the printer today so they can be scanned, duplicated, packaged and mailed toward Ireland. For anyone who isn't familiar with Ronan, he was a percussionist for DEAD CAN DANCE and for KÍLA (www.kila.ie) .
It has been a great return to including a greater amount of literature in my work and working on the Garden Wars illuminations has been a great inspiration to many other similar works, which I'll endeavour to have online soon.