Enchanted World - The Art Of Anne Sudworth
(2000 - Paper Tiger)

I'd characterize this collection 'subtle'. 84 of the book's 112 pages are presenting her art well. Among those, I am counting a number of longer horizontal pieces which are displayed as large as they can be on one page, but even then, their dimensions allow them to take up only half the page or a little less. The remaining space is usually filled up with the effusive commentary that soon begins to wear thin. While wizards, unicorns, dragons, fairies & fallen angels make some appearances, the rest of the images are mostly cloud- or land-scapes. More than a handful of those feature very effective castles and ruins, but so many are just murky paths or water-runs. There are eight double-page spreads which are still satisfying because the splits fall among the images' landscapes, but another four don't work when the very defuse subject is a cloudbank, or a large fairy circle, and the book's gutter disturbs that display. Each caption is a painting's title, creation year and size, with some words from Ms. Sudworth, and at the end there is an alphabetical index of the art pieces. There's also a short section where she illustrates, with various stages of one painting, how she builds to her final result. I don't usually judge the content of the art, but I feel here I have to share one particular impression. A fifth of the book is held for her acclaimed Earth Light paintings, which is usually a grand tree, or copse of trees, which is "lit up", along with the grass at their basses. You see, the arboreal subject is supposed to be taken as ethereally producing its own light, but for the life of me, it simply looks like driving at night on a country road with your car's headlights on. The accompanying breathless text goes on and on about how the mysterious light signals the fantastic in our mundane world and how clearly there must be unseen mystical creatures cavorting through the scenes. I laughed out loud when later in the book, a comment, about a painting of a plain tree, stated that while the Earth Light wasn't present, the viewer could still 'sense' it and intuit that fairies were obviously just out of sight. With that said, this artist obviously has a following who love her gentle works and this volume is an affectionate gathering of her best.