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Marly Youman’s epic poem Thaliad, is to be published later this year by Phoenicia Publishing, Montreal. It is a work of staggering beauty and imagination, and I’m enormously proud to have been asked by the author and her publisher, Elizabeth Adams, to create the image that will speak for it on the cover. As with The Foliate Head, I’m also responsible for the page decorations inside. I’ve roughly laid out the cover design and today have been painting collage papers and snipping out leaves and tendrils from them. The foliate is present in the design for this cover as it was in my last for Marly, but this time presented in a quite different way. I shan’t reveal much today other than a handful of leaves, a sketch of a detail and a couple of trial birds. Watch this space.
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Clive Hicks-Jenkins' Artlog: 
Needless to say, I can’t wait! (in case other readers don’t realize it, this frequently-commenting Beth is also the Elizabeth of Phoenicia Publishing.)
The first picture of all the cut out leaves is beautiful on it’s own, there’s something so satifying about it – Clive, what’s that mouthwatering green most of the leaves are painted, is it Green Gold, it’s gorgeous. Love the light, playful quality of the sketch and the birds
Well spotted, the colour is Green Gold by Golden Acrylics. It’s transparent-ish, and so lots of streakiness adds liveliness and the sparkle of white coming through.
Yes, it’s such a glorious colour, very alive.
It always feels oddly significant (though it’s just happenstance!) that you use Golden, and they’re so close to me here… And are the other, more sparing greens the last of the green from the inherited bottles of ink?
I was surprised that these weren’t the sketches you sent. You always leaf out with so many! And now I have a much clearer idea.
Yes, the Golden link is charming, and always makes me smile when I think about it. Given what a significant part the paint manufacturer plays in my practice, I think about it a lot!*
Oh Marly, the table is strewn with leaf-litter as though autumn has come early. And yes, dozens of thumbnail sketches, each varying the composition slightly to find the best way through to the finishing line. It’s all up in the air, as it were, until it lands! But the ‘shape’ of the cover is clear in my mind, and the rest is just juggling the details until all is as we wish.
*Note to readers: Marly is referring to the fact that the manufacturing plant where the Golden Acrylics I’m so devoted to are made, is not far from Cooperstown where she lives. In fact Marly has long been acquainted with Mark Golden’s family, and so the link is even greater.
Cooperstown? What a fine name for a town lol, now I love the paints even more
Clive, my own now-elderly father has known Mark Golden for many years — and often played table tennis with him! I visited the factory for the first time last summer – fascinating – and the tour includes a store stocked with every single product they make, where visitors are welcome to test things before, um, purchasing their choices.
One day when I visit Marly and Mike… don’t know when that will be, but it’ll happen some time… then I must tour the factory. That store sounds like heaven!
Yes, it’s BETH that knows Goldens. I do know a Golden family from over by Earlville, but they are–oddly–not related.
So I’ve completely made it up that you know them. How could I have got that so wrong? Beth must have told me that she knew them because I knew someone did, and I guess at some point it became you, Marly, perhaps because you’re the one who lives close to the manufacturing plant. Funnily enough I had an e-mail correspondence with Mark a while back, and I mentioned you as if he knew you personally. He must have wondered what I was talking about.
Oh, and they have done wonderful special things for artists, of course, like mixing up special paints–I do hear about those things from artist friends.
If I lived in Cooperstown I would never be out of that factory. They’d probably lock up when they saw me coming!
Love them, Clive…my idea of heaven is sitting and snipping out leaves and animals from painted or pencilled paper! You must have had a heavenly day…they are super!
Thank you Shellie. I like this stage of the work, where the idea is in place and it’s time to pull it all together.