Ramble House have published a beautiful perfect-bound volume of Australian fantasy illustrator Gavin L. O'Keefe's work, containing a plethora of black and white illustrations. Many are published here for the first time. TIME-LINE: SELECTED ILLUSTRATIONS by Gavin L. O'Keefe is 86 pages of high-quality work which will delight all lovers of the fantastique.
Gavin L. O'Keefe (sometimes known as the GLOster) is well-known to cognoscenti of fantastic and imaginative illustration.This volume, with its superb full-colour covers illustrated with some of O'Keefe's unique fairy and elfin/fae-inspired works ('Fairy Goddess", "Flower Fairy" and "The Blue Leaf"), contains a wide variety of illustrations from four decades of visionary work.
Here are works inspired by music (Queen, King Crimson, Brian Eno); by literature (Poe, Sheckley, Lear, Lupoff, Yarbro, Tod Robbins and lesser-known lights). Not the least remarkable of these illustrations is a dark suite of illustrations to stories by H.P. Lovecraft which O'Keefe produced in the late 80's and which see print here for the first time.
Rounding out the volume are a section of "Portraits" and another of "Fantasies". The latter includes works inspired by Lewis Carroll amongst others. In "The Swindle" (1995) one can discern the influence of one of O'Keefe's favourite artists, the Victorian Richard Dadd. By turns surreal, bizarre and extraordinary in their close observation of realms "beyond the worlds we know", these illustrations show O'Keefe at his best. The classic "Half-Shell on the Venus" is the second last piece in the book (a Tarot card illustration is the last). 'Half-Shell" is perhaps an oblique tribute to both Botticelli and to Kilgore Trout, and perhaps (one might speculate) to the work of Terry Gilliam. It encapsulates O'Keefe's unique view of the world.
O'Keefe, despite his myriad influences, remains resolutely his own artist. If these piece are united by their quirkiness, they also show a command of various media and techniques that O'Keefe has perfected over his many years of illustrating.
Highly recommended for all enthusiasts of fantasy art, and for library illustrative collections.
TIME LINE by Gavin L. O'Keefe is available from Amazon.com
http://tiny.cc/ffeic or direct from Ramble House at: http://www.ramblehouse.com/.
Ramble House also publish O'Keefe's ''A Snark Selection'' (By Lewis Carroll and Harry Stephen Keeler) http://www.ramblehouse.com/snark.htm and O'Keefe's illustrated edition of Lewis Carroll's ''Through the looking Glass and What Alice Found There'' http://www.ramblehouse.com/lookingglass.htm
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