Empyrean - The Art Of Stephen Hickman
(2015 - Titan Books)

Know that, as a title, 'EMPYREAN' is only tenuously tethered to this book - the title-word appears on the spine of the volume and on the dust-jacket, but not on the title-pages, contents, introduction, foreword, or even the indicia. The volume is extremely attractive and shines a great spotlight onto Hickman's work. Out of its 144 pages, 109 feature large reproductions of the paintings & drawings, and half of those as full-bleeds. (Nine of those displays are larger works spreading over the gutter, but all remain acceptable in that presentation - as opposed to the eight pages that are lost to four double-page-spreads turned sideways.) There's another 12 pages where more-than-one image vie for your attention. Fantasy is king here, though there's a healthy dose of Science-Fiction as well. The exhibits are all captioned with their title, but many, many, of them are accompanied by commentary from the artist - and for each of those, he has made it a point to provide his specific 'technical notes' about his materials & processes. That, and his two-page section, The Secret Art of Painting, make me flag that another artist would definitely find valuable the flow of all this information. This volume scores as a significantly better display of Hickman's craft than the artist's earlier book, THE FANTASY ART OF STEPHEN HICKMAN, but be aware that that book has 29 paintings not featured here.