Monday, July 20, 2015

Once Upon A Place

Artists often borrow from or pay homage to the work of other artists. 
Some artists also steal other people's ideas simply because they haven't the skill or imagination to originate their own.
I hope it is always clear when I make a visual quote from another person's work that it is done with the utmost respect for the original artist, and for valid artistic reasons. 
Here, for example, is the cover of  Once Upon A Place, edited by Laureate na nÓg, Eoin Colfer and illustrated by me.
Most of you will have noticed that the figure on the rocky foreground, is a visu
al quotation from the best known painting by Caspar David Friedrich, "The Wanderer Above the Mists".
The stories in the anthology, Once Upon A Place, are set not only in different places, but also in different periods. I hoped to hint at that variety by showing a boy wearing modern dress but posed as in Friedrich’s two hundred year old iconic image. It was also my way of my way of saluting one of my favourite paintings.