Glimmerglass: reinventing the wheel

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Sometimes the labyrinthine processes of creativity (good choice of adjective, that, given what I’m about to share) astound me. Something that should be so simple turns out to be incredibly complicated. For example, when I turned my attention to painting angels for the Temptations of Solitude series, I had no idea that I would be tripped-up/waylaid/diverted by the fascinating conundrum… fascinating to me that is, though I accept that I’m probably in a minority… of how angels might fasten their clothes over their wings. I researched to little avail, finding that historically most artists just garb their angels in loosely flowing draperies, or paint them into elaborate costumes seen from angles that don’t address the fastenings. So I made maquettes, paper patterns of garments, endless studies, and not a few paintings that were specifically done to work out the ideas. It was a lot of work to arrive at a solution that probably few people will ever notice. But there were side benefits, because the process… which I admit is a form of play… took me down creative byways I wouldn’t have come upon had there not been a problem to solve.

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And so to Marly Youmans’ Glimmerglass, and the cover of the novel is proving to be complex in ways I hadn’t anticipated when I set myself the task of wrapping it in a ‘tree-of-life’. The idea came from a list jotted down as I first read the manuscript. Peppering the text are lists of decorative devices springing from natural and imaginative worlds, in the scrolling ironwork of ornamental gates, the plaster relief-decorations of a ceiling, and in the iron knockers of doors. The author has compiled a bestiary telegraphing the existence of a realm beyond the day-to-day, and it’s the sheer abundance of her Historia Naturalis that fires my imagination.

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But deciding on something is a far cry from realising it, and now I find myself having to re-imagine the author’s bestiary into the ‘Clivean universe’… Marly’s term, not mine… so that the diverse elements of the cover will be coherent. A Minotaur, to give an example, mustn’t look as though it’s been borrowed from an antique vase in the British Museum, but conjured by me for Marly.

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Even when it’s to be just a detail among many others, as this Minotaur is destined to be, there’s no short-cut. The beast has to be recognisable, yet unique to the world we create together. Her words and my images, as though both come from the same place.

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So this is why I’ve spent a day assembling a maquette of a mythical beast that lives in a labyrinth. From the maquette I’ll make some sketches, and after the sketches some finished drawings. Hopefully one of them will emerge as the most effective expression of a man/bull for the cover of Glimmerglass, and then all will be well.

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