[projectaon] Fwd: <>--- Interview Questions : Answer No.1 ---<>
- From: "Jonathan Blake" <blake.jon@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Project Aon List" <projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:08:04 -0700
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <paj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 11:11 AM
Subject: <>--- Interview Questions : Answer No.1 ---<>
To: Jonathan Blake <blake.jon@xxxxxxxxx>
_____________ M I D - W I N T E R- 2 0 0 8
_____________ PETER ANDREW JONES PUBLISHING
---- ORIGINAL PAINTINGS : LIMITED EDITION PRINTS & BOOKS : ART
GREETINGS CARDS
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AFFETTI : CRUX MILLENNIUM : HEROES & VILLAINS : RURAL DREAMS : SOLAR
WIND : URBAN DREAMS : WINGS OF FIRE
PAINTINGS of CHURCH STRETTON of LUDLOW of SOUTH SHROPSHIRE of
SHREWSBURY & PAINTINGS of LONDON
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_______ MEMO
Hi Jonathan,
Herewith answer to Q1.
1) According to Solar Wind, a compilation of works from 1974-1980, you
had an interest in science-fiction. However, by the 80s and 90s, you
were probably much better known for your fantasy artwork. Was this
change a conscious decision based on your own changing interests? Or
was it down to fantasy being more popular at that time, forcing you to
move to where the work was?
Actually, I was a fantasy artist some time before I was an Science
Fiction artist.
Solar Wind is a snapshot of a particular tranche of works and, I
suppose since it was written in Science Fiction paperback boom times
just preceding events like mainstream/high street consumer exposure to
Fighting Fantasy etc, it tends to start from the viewpoint that I was
"a Science Fiction artist" which, certainly I was, but not
exclusively.
One reason for this perception was the sheer exposure those (SF) works
had then, because my images had accelerated books sales in the UK from
about 8,500/15,000 books (typical UK print runs in 1973/4) up to
96,000 copies by the late 70's (on books like Larry Niven's "Ringworld
Engineers") and those sort of figures were revolutionary for "genre"
books then, when that sort of thing happens naturally publishers
circle like hungry lions looking for meat - everyone wanted to have
the work and by the late 70's W.H. Smith, then the biggest retail book
outlet in the UK, would "take any book with a Peter Jones cover"
simply because it cut down the time and effort marketing departments,
sales reps and store managers had to otherwise spend deciding, at the
flip of a proof print in a rep's salesbook talking to a shop manager
on the sales floor. Luckily for me, whilst this sort of information
did feed down to me from time to time I was only focused on my art so
it didn't "go to my head" and I always kept my head straight with the
same unending approach I still have, namely, "I'm just (always) trying
to make exciting interesting work, which, for whatever reason, seems
to be my personality's main component."
In fact, my very first covers were for Doreen Scott, then the art
editor at Puffin (1973) when I was still an art student at St.
Martins. Both were fantasy books. Immediately following that I did
some covers for what was then Panther and Mayflower Books (both later
consumed by Harper Collins) and these also were fantasy books, a few
of which are in the Solar Wind Book, A Warlock in Spite of Himself and
King Kobold, both Christopher Stasheff titles. There were a goodly
number of other fantasy works and, if you look closely at the Solar
Wind book, you'll see there are more fantasy works in there than you
might at first think - I guess it is where one's focus starts from
that defines what I did as far as any individual viewer is concerned?
The cover of Solar Wind being what it was intended to be, a "classic"
Science Fiction image, concretised the idea that I was a "Science
Fiction artist".
I started out wanting to be an aviation artist(!) but there wasn't a
lot of work around of that type and the market was pretty much
cornered by a couple of other artists so art directors were reluctant
to give me that sort of of job, even though my work when it was used
on such books, sold as well an anyone else's. We are all typecast and
sorted and graded by the market whether we are educated enough or not
at the time to realise it. It's taken me 35 years to be able to fully
publish my own aviation work and not need any one else's sanction to
display it - it's been a long flight!
When I started on the roleplay covers I had absolutely no idea what
would transpire but I always got high on challenges; the tougher the
brief and/or deadline the more I relished it. I also enjoyed projects
where, frankly, nobody had the faintest idea what it would lead to.
Roleplay books, in terms of mass market exposure, had not happened
then, so I was the natural illustrator to be asked to "do something
revolutionary" because I always had a Kamikaze attitude towards the
unknown - caution was not in my make-up, just a lot of experience by
then, in terms of judging what I could handle, so I tended to dive-in
to jobs because I just liked the high energy of working with other
creatives, art directors and editors and tv producers etc., all of
whom had extremely high standards and expectations (of me) so the
"globalisation of the fantasy art market" in terms of my own work was
something not entirely generated by either art or roleplay but just as
much by the personalities at that time where there was a new interface
between fan type involvement and the fully professional end, a meeting
point, and that as much as anything generated what came to be "the
look" that this type of imagery had, at least in the UK and throughout
Europe and into the Southern Hemisphere and Eastern territories -
however, Debbie and I (for it was she who was co-director in my
company, Solar Wind Limited, and ran my office and was responsible for
correlating and communicating with all these publishers around the
globe) had no time to stop and consider any of that - if anyone thinks
it was all a relaxed cake-walk of laid-back relaxation then they've
never been a freelance illustrator sitting on top of an exploding
marketplace!
So this exploding fast-paced global market, with publishers jumping on
the rocket-ride with Debbie and I stuck on the nose cone begat more
and more of the same until at one point one art director phoned to
enquire where "her" artwork was when it had already been on her desk
for a week! In short, it was hard for anyone to keep laid-back because
of the sheer heat of these markets at that time. Rollercoaster is an
understatement of the event . . . . . . .
When you take all of this energy into consideration it is not
surprising that I was then considered a Fantasy Artist, but the
reality is I always was, it was the sheer global distribution of the
later roleplay works that made it appear as though this element was
"new" in my work.
The fact that it ballooned so that I then appeared to be a fantasy
artist is, believe it of not, something I only very recently
considered because of the editing of the HEROES & VILLAINS BOOK. The
reality is I never, at any time, had the time, or took the time for
that matter, to consider any of this. An artist can only be where his
head's at and mine is always full of ideas and things I want to paint
so it is only in very recent times that I have had, because of
self-publishing, to try to objectively consider exactly WHAT my work,
historically, actually comprises, and where it might be headed. Being
self-published means taking on the skills of a publisher on top of
those of an artist and even though I ran several companies, Solar Wind
Limited being one of them, a licensing agency with clients as far
apart a Tokyo and Los Angeles, I wouldn't say that even that level of
global management skill exactly provides what it takes to run a
publishing company, especially one that tries to be true to its roots
so to speak. It is quite a challenge but fortunately one that Debbie
and I enjoy enormously otherwise it simply wouldn't happen. We are
still learning. Every day is a learning curve. There's no room for
self-congratulation or complacency if one wants to be professional.
That's challenge enough, but when, in addition "there are no maps or
pathways" and "the future is not yet" then it's as well I retain a
certain degree of Kamikaze-ness - or any book or painting or print or
greeting card we release simple wouldn't happen.
It is so hard to be objective about any of this because I am in the
middle of it. About the best Debbie and I can say is we recently
empathised with the Rolling Stones "Shine a Light" movie. I saw a
press interview where "Keef" said "It's who we are, it's what we do.
What else should we do?" I saw the Stones at "The Crawdaddy Club" in
Richmond, London when i was hardly even a teenager and they were
unknown, and they are still on-stage doing it,. Like it or hate it
it's "what they do". I painted or tried to!) Like Salvador Dali at
that time (is that fantasy art?) and now I paint like this >
http://www.peterandrewjones.net/paintings_fantasy/crx100.htm so if I
painted "Dali Fantasy" at school for my A-level Art Exam and I paint
Crux Millennium Art now, was I ever really an "SF" artist or was I "an
SF Artist for a certain span of time"?
Perhaps, a remark by Artist Tim White, made to me in the 80's, applies
- "It's all fantasy art".
So, there you go - first a "Dalinian surrealist-fantasy artist" at
school, then a start-up fantasy artist at art school, but because I
couldn't get to be a full-time aviation artist, pulled sideways into
hard sf, pushed back (by market forces) into "fighting" fantasy,
globalised by a publishing phenomena, then after that, in the 90's,
pulled back into sf though some of it was a deliberate project to
re-energise "Science Fantasy" (Marion Zimmer-Bradley) which was a type
of writing that was dead in the water until art Director Dennis Barker
at Arrow Books in London and myself decided to re-invent (the covers
of) those books, which as you will know, span hard sf through to
fantasy - a fitting finale!
"As a man paints, so he is perceived" (but only if the viewer gets to
see it . . . . . .)
Do you still have an interest in science
fiction literature, TV, or films?
I have always been very excited by Science Fiction, which to me, even
when very young, watching "Forbidden Planet" etc in black and white on
TV, was not really fiction; I always saw it as "the future yet to
happen". I still am excited by it. But inevitably how I relate to it
after a 35 year involvement with it professionally cannot be the same
as being 12 years old and reading Dan Dare in an Eagle comic during a
school lunch break in 1963. The latter is as a fan the former as a
producer of SF imagery. So one's relationship with the genre evolves,
inevitably. These days I am no less interested in SF but I don't watch
any of it on TV or in movies or read it. I only create it. I guess it
changed when I wrote the Shattered Earth short stories.
TALES FROM SHATTERED EARTH
http://www.peterandrewjones.net/paintings_science_fiction/swa66.htm
was probably the very first downloadable e-texts that were e-commerce
enabled. It was an experimental project between me an Barclays Bank
in the UK in the mid-90's. They were experimenting with what was, at
that time, quite advanced (futuristic!) "web money" and were
intrigued by the then untested idea of purely electronic storytelling
via a website which I was publishing at that time. It all worked very
well, technologically, but of course, as was destined to be the case,
Barclays endevours were swept away by the onslaught of the then young
upstarts PayPal etc, so the project was eventually overtaken by events
and it never got beyond 12 stories, but I am pleased that I was able
to be at the forefront of what was happening in those areas even if it
consigned the stories (at least until now . . . .) to obscurity very
quickly.
It did significantly change my relationship with SF. After I'd written
something myself, which was an entirely spontaneous and experimental
foray into illustrating my own writing, or, probably more accurately,
writing to match what I was painting, I realised I had always thought
like that but not ever had the opportunity to do that. As has been
said elsewhere, when I was very young, up until the age of 12, I was
forever scribbling text to match illustrations I cut from magazines
and plastic Airfix kit wrappers that had great artwork by artists I
aspired to equal one day, and the Barclays "Barclaycoin" project
reunited me with that personality trait, dormant since the 1950's!
I now find that the two are inseparable, painting and writing, because
what happens is an idea pops-up and I find that painting it
communicates it on one level and writing on another. Probably this is
because the ideas feel so intense that just painting isn't enough to
get them out of my system adequately.
After all these years of being associated with these genres I find I
can no longer trace the roots of an individual idea, particularly, nor
desire to.
It is enough (for me) just to do it.
Best regards
P
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PETER ANDREW JONES PUBLISHING - "Decidedly Different"
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~~~~~~
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