Customer Reviews

A Little Night Magick 2004

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This is a calendar, not a book. This is a beautifully rendered calendar, featuring the art of Jessica Galbreth, and contains a few bits that were unexpected extras.
It is a calendar, containing what we usually expect in a calendar... moon phases, major holidays, the dates (and times in EST) of the equinoxes and solstices, it also features the wonderful artwork of Jessica Galbreth.
I became familiar with Ms. Galbreth's work a couple of years ago, and in cooperation with the artist, featured some of her work on one of our websites. She has a way with the feminine figure, seductive and sultry, and some of her works are colorful and imaginative while others are dark and mysterious. Her female compositions honor Deity, fairy folk and the Witch in all of us.
This calendar, as described in the title, explores a lot of her works done mainly in black and white, with the female figure softly enhanced in flesh tones and subtle colors that makes her stand out from the rest of the composition (as in September's "Autumn Enchantress"). The play on the words "Darker Side" also comes from her compositions, where the female figure can be almost gothic in appearance (as in February's "Gothic Faery", or November's "Dragon Keeper"), or a or a creature of the night (as in January's "Mistress of Wolves" or in June's "Vampire"). She also includes the dark mysterious (as in October's "Black Magick").
The one strikingly different piece is August's Bastet, with its rich reds and rusts as background to the Goddess in a traditional white Egyptian dress and a dark black cat. Bolder strokes, radiance and energy single out this work, as though Ms. Galbreth wanted that Deity to stand out amongst her other calendar pages.
Each face is alluring, each pose is striking and you can see the strength of Ms. Galbreth's talent exhibited in this calendar.
The added bonus is the first page of the calendar, where Ms. Galbreth shares with us how she creates her paintings. She lays out a step by step illustration of a work in progress and it is interesting to see how an artist goes from inspiration to illustration.
If you like the mystical, the magical and the dark, this calendar with present you with 12 months of visual enjoyment while serving the most practical of uses: keeping track of the coming year.

'Sometimes the only escape from the ordinary is to desire the darkness just a little bit more than we were told is healthy. Beyond the edge...we may find that we finally belong...'

Jessica Galbreth is one of my favorite artists and I have enjoyed having this 2004 calendar up on my wall this year, just above my computer, and plan on buying her 2005 calendar as well. I just hope its as bountiful as this one is. Under every image a poem or quote, like the one I posted above, accompanies it, accentuating the prints and identifying with their meanings. There's, of course, a different picture for every month and they include her darker, more gothic-looking ladies, such as *Mistress Of Wolves (January); *Gothic Faery (February); *The Witching Hour (March); Arachne (April); *Raven (May); Vampire (June); Stalker (July); Bastet (August); Autumn Enchantment (September); *Black Magick (October); Dragon Keeper (November); and Nyx (December).

If you'd like to see what those color drawings look like, copy and paste this address to your web browser to be taken to her website of otherworldly splendors...
http://www.enchanted-art.com/