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"Colony Ship"(From the book
"Solar Wind" Volume 1)By :
Deborah Susan Jones :
Editor A painting created
exclusively for
the SOLAR WIND Anthology in 1979.In many ways, it is an unusual piece.At the time, the workload of the
Solar Wind Studio was at 100% saturation, but the Artist
so wanted to
create a piece exclusive to the book that the work hours
of the studio
were extended to "the maximum any human being could
manage" for a two
week period of time. "I was just
driven" says the Artist, "I just had to do it, and I
didn't even know
why, I just knew I had to do it".It was also an
opportunity to create a somewhat different layout to the
standard
wraparound book cover structure of the time that shaped
the
presentation of his work. "Maybe that was why I felt the
need to do it.
I wasn't restrained by the need to consider book spine
widths, back
cover copy (text) indeed, even front cover copy, I could,
literally,
just do it and please myself".Ironically,
though some years later, it did end up on a book cover!"It was used on Isaac Asimov's
title, "Nemesis", and it worked very well!
"The picture
library division of my company was approached by
Meulenhoff bv in
Holland who I had worked with for many years, and I
thought "It'll be
an opportunity to see what a publisher does with an image
placed on a
book (cover) that was specifically designed to ignore all
the
contemporary rules that governed the creation of book
cover art at that
time" and indeed, the addition of the book's title
typography,
presenting the prowess of Asimov as such a highly
recognised writer,
held resolve the manner in which an image, expressly
designed not to
work on the front cover of a book in fact, works perfectly
on the cover
of the book!"."Sometimes, you
just have to take risks to advance your portfolio, your
creativity,
indeed, even branch out by doing something that you don't
even know why
you are doing it at the time, just obeying your gut
reaction, a
reaction to, well, you might not even know on a conscious
level?""After I took
the decision (in 1999) to "go self-published" I realised
partly it was
because I wanted to explore this direction much more
fully, and these
days, I certainly endeavor not to over think concepts (not
that I ever
really did come to think of it) (pun!) and, even though
friends and I
discuss "the nature of one's creativity" fairly
frequently, I'm not
sure we ever really come to any resting point other than
"I feel the
need to do it, so I do"."If it ain't
broke, don't fix it".Deborah Susan JonesEditor
