Myths & Magazines

I HAVE BEEN on the lookout lately for a good magazine. For me this is quite a difficult thing to find... It needs to have amongst its pages some or all of these things: well written stories, strange ephemera, book reviews, art that is not arty, old objects, interesting articles about interesting people, nicely designed pages, non-mainstream music, geekily obscure academia, lots of good photographs, enough reading to last a few weeks and delightful inspirational things that can be savoured! I have found some excellent contenders recently, which I would like to share with you.

Firstly, there is the wonderful Illustration Magazine, a quarterly publication of all things illustration-y: interviews with artists, book reviews, articles on historical illustration, book arts, and introductions to newcomers to the field. I was particularly excited about an interview with Wayne Anderson in this spring's issue, a very favourite illustrator of mine.

Next in line we have an intriguing magazine that has been around for some time I believe, and yet I had not until now discovered the treasury of visual delight within. Raw Vision magazine is a journal of outsider art, "art brut" and contemporary folk art, which is to say, art that has been made by those who on the whole do not consider themselves artists. Spring's issue contained strange woodcarvings, hand made gothic follies made from found materials, "devil houses" painted by a prisoner, drawings and paintings by outsiders and madmen and many many more visual wonders. It is a real find.

Lastly another new discovery: Cabinet Magazine. This one's hard to categorise.. a quarterly that covers art and culture but resides in some quirky corner. This issue boasts articles and images about such things as sloth, opals, victorian fitness machines, clockless time, snowflakes, nineteenth century female naturalists, and the mysteries of stones. And there you have it!

Online magazines are another beast altogether, and becoming increasingly popular. I was saddened indeed to read today of the closure of Endicott Studio's Journal of Mythic Arts. Written by Terri Windling and Midori Snyder, this magazine has been a real library of myth and magic to inspire tale-lovers and dreamers like me who had no place to sit and read like this before, and I would like to thank them for supporting my work amongst the other delights that graced Endicott's pages.
In their final farewell post, Terri and Midori pass the torch of online fairytale and folklore journaling to a host of wonderful places, which I look forward to exploring.

This brings me to introduce you to Les Bonnes Fees ~ a brand new fairytale and folklore magazine which will be launching in June with one of my paintings on the front cover.
And here it is in progress....