Katherine Keenum

I have been felled by anaplasmosis, one of the tick-borne diseases. It's mean, people, but at least I've had John Nash: Artist & Countryman to read while I recuperate. The lithograph shown here is not at all typical of Nash's work (except for the very identifiable plants on the windowsill), but it fits my current situation. I've taken the image from Part 3 of Poul Webb's coverage of Nash's work. Its four parts are a splendid compilation of Nash's landscapes (watercolor and oils) and wood engravings.

Website alert: Looking for illustrations of English and European villages by various artists in the 20th C? Have I got a link for you! Go to Villages in Art and Illustration at Slap Happy Larry—a site that looks worth exploring.

Blog post alert: Material culture matters in historical and fantasy fiction. Rare survivals of decorative paper cutting by schoolgirls in the 17th century found under floorboards at Sutton House could prompt a telling detail in a story, but it would matter whether you were writing about a curator's discovery, life in the 17th C, or an imaginary world. Particularly for historical fiction, it would be important to know just who had access to such cut-outs in a world where paper was expensive.
 
For three more delightful examples, click here. And for context, click here.

I've just been introduced by our Western Massachusetts public library system to Astrid Sheckels and her Hector Fox books. I can't tell you how delighted I was to come across Ebenezer Moose, shown here, in Hector Fox and the Giant Quest! For many years, my husband and I vacationed at a lake in Maine, where we almost always saw at least one moose and especially loved spotting them in remote marshes. Sheckels' evocation of that landscape is evocative.

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Hoo boy! How's this for a follow-up to yesterday's post? A transformation of every major element of Hollar's Pedlar into something lively, colorful, and strange. Lion-dog: otter. Skeleton: dragon. Peddler: traveller. Pannier: mystery box. It's Alan Lee's illustration for a story in Merlin Dreams by Peter Dickinson. I have just requested the book through interlibrary loan to find out what's going on. (As an author, I encourage people to buy books. As a library trustee and environmentalist, I urge you to remember what marvellous resources the country's public libraries provide.) As for this picture, I guess I'll wait to see what Dickinson was up to, but wouldn't it be fun to make up a story of one's own to go with it?

For my fantasy work-in-progress, I was looking for details of what a foot peddler might carry. Up came this etching by Wenceslaus Hollar after a picture in The Dance of Death by Hans Holbein the Younger. The wicker pannier resembles one in The Wayfarer by Hieronymous Bosch. Check. But what about the animal?

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In the wake of last night's assassination attempt, I am staying clear of the news on the theory that there will be far too much chatter and misinformation afloat. Instead, I am working on maps for my current fantasy project and looking at pictures I love—like Charles Vess's illustration for Ursula K. Le Guin's short story, "High Marsh" in The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition. For those of you who are fascinated by the interplay of artist and author, check out Le Guin's post, A Work in Progress: Earthsea Sketches by Charles Vess. I'm also reading Le Guin's The Dispossessed in the Library of America edition. Let's all try to stay sane.

In order to force myself to work out a village layout for a story setting, I've been collecting drawings and photographs of medieval villages. One of the most useful is an archeological site at Gainsthorpe in Yorkshire. A different archeological discovery is a Labyrinthine structure found on hilltop in Crete. That History Blog post sent me to an earlier period, but the same sort of stimulation toward inventing place.

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Well, the Supreme Court dropped a bombshell. Still love the red, white, and blue. BOOM!

Congratulations to Aaron Becker! His wordless picture book, The Tree and the River, is the 2024 double winner of England's prestigious Yoto Carnegie Medal for Illustration (awarded by an expert panel of librarians) and the Yoto Carnegie Shadowers Choice Medal for Illustration, which is decided by children and library users. It's one of those picture books in which the more you look, the more you see. In double-page spread after double-page spread, it depicts the colonization of a beautiful valley, its gradual transformation to village to town to city to ruin to—well, you'll have to get hold of the book to find out!

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