Thursday, January 3, 2008

Artwork for Violet Hunt Collection

I've had the good fortune to create artwork for books published by Ash-Tree Press. More Tales of the Uneasy, published a few years ago, is a collection of spooky stories by Violet Hunt. The dust jacket for a book of ghost stories doesn't have to include a ghostly figure . . . or any figures, because absence can imply presence. The cottage implies that there is (or was) an inhabitant. The pink bird, so present on the front cover, is mysteriously absent on the back cover. Arguably, an ethereal mystery is evoked. Illustrations can be emblematic. Illustrations that are "narrative-driven" or "narrative-specific" are like a snapshot of an event, which, in a way, refers to photojournalism more than poetry.

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