Customer Reviews

Enchanted World: The Art Of Anne Sudworth

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The paintings in this book make fantasy look like reality, they look like photographs and the images seem so real. The earth and the trees generate energy and light. The atmospheric, surreal night-time landscapes and mythical creatures in this book will lead you to believe that they truly exist. I also loved that there were detailed explanations from the artist of what she was trying to achieve, as well as pictures of the works-in-progress! I highly recommend it.

I stumbled upon Anne Sudworth's art through an Amazon search I did with the keywords of 'gothic art'. Her book instantly popped up, but at the time I wasn't sure I would be interested in this type of art as a whole. I tend to enjoy fantasy art with unicorns, faeries, gnomes, elves, dragons etc. so I wasn't sure if this would be too 'gothic' or too 'sci- fi' for my taste.

After months of debating this, I finally broke down and purchased this book. I have to say I wasn't disappointed at all and it fit my personal taste all too well. The book is very well put together with plenty of information on the artist and her career as it progressed. The first few pages feature her art that first had an equestrian nature because she believed that to be a successful non- starving artist one must do art to appeal to the masses-- so for a while she painted horses, racetracks and the Lake District. As her art became sought after through her gallery exhibitions she started experimenting with painting trees that have the 'Earth Light' emanating from them. Later her art expanded towards an even more fantastic nature and she painted mythical subjects such as Merlin, unicorns, dragons, fairies etc. and also a lot of darker architecture dating back hundreds of years that appealed to her more gothic nature. The thing I love about her art is all of her work is portrayed under a lovely moonlit sky. Even though somehow her work is meant to be gothic in nature, it doesn't seem dark and sci- fi, but magical and out of this world instead. It is obvious to the eye that she enjoys painting trees the most with a lit path or a glowing tree. Her paintings all have the beautiful earthly glow that Anne Sudworth refers to as 'Earth Light'. It is described as the energy and soul of the Earth and the trees she paints. I think that's a very beautiful and deep way of looking at nature that other artists would never be able to capture as well.

The quality of the printing is very good. I can easily tell because if you lean close to each print, you can see all of the individual brush strokes. I am really glad I ordered this book because it is not only really affordable, but opened my eyes to a new artist whose art I would love to see in more books.I recommend this to all ages and people who love fantasy art. Not just all that, but I recommend reading the book from back to back because it's quite interesting.