An interesting article came out in The Guardian today about Alan Lee's journey into a career as a Tolkien artist and his work in the just released Fall of Gondolin:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/03/alan-lee-jrr-tolkien-the-lord-of-the-rings-the-hobbit-the-fall-of-gondolin?CMP=share_btn_tw.
Thoughts about what Lee says here? Any relationship to mythmaking suggested in this article?
4 comments:
Thanks for posting this link! Lee's job as a cemetery gardener played a big part in stimulating the myth making part of his imagination. Just like Tolkein found inspiration for his world in the rolling hills and mossy forests of England, so Lee also found similar inspiration for his paintings depicting Tolkein's universe. Seeing the unseen in everyday life is what imagination is and it is a fundamental part of subcreation.
Vairë
Lee talks about the feeling of stepping into a different realm, which I think we've talked about a lot in class as part of Tolkien's myth-making. Tolkien takes us to a new, but still relatable, place. He also reminds me of Tolkien in the way that he did his own thing, so to speak. In school, no one else sat around illustrating old stories, but that's what Lee chose to do, because he loved it. Additionally, his talk about the atmosphere of New Zealand being an inspiration is Tolkien-like.
Thank you for sharing! I also found it interesting that Lee talks so much about the lay of the land he was from as well as what New Zealand was like. I love the fact that he didn't just rely on what everyone else said in picking New Zealand. He used a great deal of his own imagination and take on the books to decide what to compose and I think that many people in that business tend to just go with the flow and do what everyone else wants. I think there's Tolkien's artistry and then Lee's artistry. Putting them together resulted in fabulous works that both entertain readers imaginations and help them visualize a fantastic Middle-earth.
I found this article fascinating! I laughed out loud to myself in my living room to his quote of (not quoted exactly, it's from memory) "when everyone else was drawing a Volvo but I was busy drawing ancient irish stories" as I have a Celtic playlist on my laptop. That phrase also stood out to me because I constantly feel that sort of isolation and almost a perceived distinction in my major. It's hard to feel like your work matters, no matter how much you enjoy it, when other fields are praised more often and you are seen as irrelevant or unknown altogether.
I couldn't help but to pore over Lee's artwork for several minutes, and be amazed at how it compared to John Howe's. They both have similar methods of representing these enchanting universes, yet the color saturation and feeling they each give you is absolutely unique. It made me think that it is not only important to get as many perspectives as possible on Middle-earth because everyone's ideas will be different, but becaue it is like Tolkien's thoughts on Faerie-- it is ever-changing, it can be added to, it develops with time and across minds. And art is able to bring thta to life and allow us to delve deeper into it.
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