The Phoenix conceived by Roger Garland

Phoenix poster by Roger Garland

This brilliant painting was painted by well-known  Tolkien artist Roger Garland way back and is one of the best depictions of the phoenix ever.  It was only ever reproduced as a large poster that for various reasons was poorly distributed making copies hard to find.  We were lucky to buy up the last of them from Roger Garland himself some years back and he signed them all with a silver pen.  A very impressive large image that will make you want to run around the room playing air guitar and singing the Wishbone Ash song!  If you can’t remember the words then here they are:

Bird rise high from the cinders
Leave it all behind

All the ruins and the fire

Bird raise your head from the ashes
Many men lay dead
You can see them like I

Phoenix rise
Raise your head to the sky

Well given the controversy over the new film AVATAR and the alleged wholesale ripping off of Roger Dean’s ideas I guess it is only appropriate to make Roger Dean’s ‘Floating Islands’ our Picture of the Month for December.  Here it is:

This image of it is from the Roger Dean Floating Islands poster published by Pomegranate

The thing to remember is that Roger Dean was painting fantasy landscapes before most of those watching the film AVATAR were even born!  If you are under 35 years old then while you were gurgling and attempting to spray the entire room with your latest meal he was out there making amazing art like this.  Roger Dean is thought of as one of the greatest fantasy artists but he thinks of himself much more as a landscape artist and designer.  As is often the case, the works that Roger Dean is so famous for are not necessarily what he considers to be the main areas of his interest or expertise.  Whatever, his influence is tremendous and his surreal floating islands along with his waterfalls under water have captured the imagination of many people including it would now seem a film director called Cameron.

Painted in 2006 when Bullseye Tattoos called Todd Lockwood with what was for Todd an irresistible project.  This was to do an institutional series of posters where Todd Lockwood was commissioned to paint anything he wanted, so long as it looked like it was tattooed on a person’s back!  Every artist loves a job like this and Todd Lockwood was no exception!   He went into his archive of “Paintings I’d Like to See” and came up with this.  It turned out to be a stunning depiction of a war between heaven and hell with white and dark angels slugging it out in true Heroes fashion ! This ‘War of Angels’ was then reproduced as a large Todd Lockwood Limited Edition art print, which you can find on sale at Artists UK.

We are going to start putting up a classic here each month.  That is a perhaps a bold statement with the hectic couple of months of pre-Christmas trading fast approaching but let’s see what happens.  Anyway, this picture really deserves a lot more attention than it currently gets.  The real problem is that no photograph can actually do it justice at all.  When we traded at Merton Abbey Mills in South London all those years ago the Limited Edition of this painting, despite being fairly pricey, still outsold a lot of cheaper prints because it would just stop people dead in their tracks.  It is just a stunning work of art admired by art-lovers and artists alike all over the world.  It is called ‘Blind Narcissus’ and is by the extremely talented and well-known artist Jeff Jones.

Blind Narcissus by Jeff Jones

Painted in the 70’s the original painting is 90″ x 48″ painted in oils on stretched linen. The Limited Edition print was published in 1979 so it is 30 years old this year!   Image size of the Limited edition print is still a massive 850 x 425mm and is signed and numbered by the artist over 1000.  It is printed on acid-free board.  Often considered as a beautiful centrepiece for any large room or at the end of a hallway.  There is also a collectible poster version of it as the Big O poster published by Dragon’s Dream and distributed through Big O Publishing.  If you want to see more on the print or poster or see more art by Jeff Jones then just click on the image.  One of the things that strikes people about this painting is its enigmatic quality.  The posture of the woman is unusual in itself but seems somehow not that contrived.  The way her dress seems to merge into the ground gives a vaguely ghostly air to the whole painting.  The painting technique itself is reminiscent of the best of the pre-raphaelites.  We really couldn’t think of a better classic to kick off our new theme with.