Clive at the Castle, Marly at Brazen Head

CLIVEAN

The images: "Clive Hicks-Jenkins and the Art of the Book" at Hay Castle, including art from Seren of the Wildwood (WisebloodBooks), Charis in the World of Wonders (IgnatiusPress), and Maze of Blood (Mercer University Press.) The Charis images shown here are on Sussex Lustreware's World of Wonders line.

From Clive via Instagram:

Hay Castle, Hay-on-Wye

Dec 5th 2025 - March 8th 2026

Book covers and illustrations of the past ten years, including some never-before exhibited works for publishers @designfortoday, @foliosociety @faberbooks, #merceruniversitypress, @wiseblood_books_press, @ignatius_press and @penguinukbooks.

Original artworks for Beauty & Beast, Beowulf, Maze of Blood, Glimmerglass, The Owl and the Nightingale, Seren of the Wildwood, The Iliad/Odyssey, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (@penfoldpress for Faber & Faber) and Charis in the World of Wonders, as well as designs produced for @sussex_lustreware and @janesglass.

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NEW AT THE BRAZEN HEAD

"Eastern-inspired gems from Marly Youmans" -- The Brazen Head on X

The wonderful Brazen Head has published a group of five poems of mine. Some are the result of travels to Singapore and Seoul from the past summer, and others drifted along in their wake. Several of them join together the beauty of Otsego Lake with faraway Asian images. To read, go HERE.

Pentina for the Childhood Dream of Hong Zhu An -- After seeing My Dream from 50 Years Ago, National Gallery, Singapore

A Tang Scholar-Poet in the Stables

Idylls of Spring 

Blue Scene, Gold Box -- After seeing Geumgwedo (1656) by Jo Sok, National Museum of Korea

Four Winter Treasures at Otsego Lake

Catching the spirit--

Study for the jacket/cover by Clive Hicks-Jenkins.
The final jacket has a warm, peachy background
and also contains A Novel, skittering around
the dragon's spines. Design work by
Burt & Burt.

Comments from Clive Hicks-Jenkins on making the cover art for Glimmerglass, taken from a comment on his Artlog:

I read Glimmerglass three or four times before I made the cover and the interior decorations for it, and I really loved the novel.

Marly is a friend of mine, and making covers and chapter-headings for her books really feels like a collaboration, which is not at all the way I hear many illustrators feel about commissions to make covers. Marly gives me free-rein to take the ideas where I think best, and is always gracious about the outcomes. I think it takes remarkable generosity on her part to give me that kind of freedom, as she must have ideas of her own, and yet she understands the processes of creativity so completely that she only ever offers positive responses. In fact I think she quite enjoys being taken by surprise!

detail, rear jacket

For my own part I never attempt to ‘illustrate’ the covers of Marly’s books, but try to create ‘moods’ for them that will have allure for anyone spotting them on bookstore shelves or in window displays. That’s my job, to catch the attention long enough to arrest the gaze of a potential purchaser, hopefully to the point of picking up the book to look inside. I have to be true to the spirit of the book, rather than try to reproduce in a picture what Marly has already achieved so beautifully in words. I attempt to make a setting (the covers) for her words (the novel). I see the image as being an accompaniment, like a pianist accompanying a singer, though I realise that might sound a tad fanciful.