Tamsin Abbott (images)
Unbound
Wild Folk comprises seven richly illustrated fables of transformation and power, summoned from the ancient stones beneath our feet and transformed by word and image into portals between past and future.
Jackie Morris has produced a series of beautiful books over the years, many of which grace the bookshelves here at Wyrd Manor but beyond sharing a few of her paintings on the Wyrd Britain facebook page she's been conspicuously absent from the blog. We're rectifying that right now with this lovely new book written in collaboration with stained glass artist Tamsin Abbott.
'Wild Folk' contains seven folklorish tales inspired by such diverse influences as classic folktales, the label of a cider bottle, a castle, W.B. Yeats and an island but what they have in common is their themes of a deep abiding love of the natural world and the mysteries it holds and a need to protect both. Here she tells stories of hares, foxes, selkies, owls, trouts, swans, and ravens in a poetic prose, words often tumbling down the page in an almost race to present themselves.
Like all the best illustrators Abbott's art reflects these themes, encapsulating and reinterpreting the stories using her chosen medium to bring an additional vibrancy to the stories, an expressiveness gained in no small part to the literal illumination that animates the art.
Not all the stories work as well as one would wish, 'The Owl's Tale' has a jarring shift mid story and 'The White Hare's Tale' is a tad heavy handed but generally this is a delicately wistful and rather beautiful book that I devoured over the course of an evening.
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