By Julia Jeffrey

Stonemaiden Scribblings

"Hmmmm, the fair Lady Be has asked me to say a bit about how I ~ Live In the Magic... well, of course the most obvious way for me (as for many) is through art, that's both making my own work and looking at other people's.

It's a huge privilege and joy (as well as extremely hard work!) to be an artist and illustrator, there is nothing quite like the experience of utter transportation that can come from losing yourself in a book with pictures!

I'm still passionate about many of the books that gave me that experience as a child, Mabel Lucie Attwell's wonderful illustrations for Peter Pan spring to mind, as well as E.H Shepard's incredibly observed and alive drawings, particularly for The Wind In The Willows.

Arthur Rackham is unparalleled in the dark tangled beauty of his faery tale work, and (-in many ways Rackham's heir) Brian Froud just cannot be praised highly enough, as the modern day Faery Godfather! - belatedly discovering Froud and Alan Lee's Faeries book whilst at art school in my early twenties, was an enormous revelation - REAL FAERIES!!! - YES!!!!! - it took me over ten years more to find the confidence to tackle the subject properly for myself, but there's no looking back now!! -

Faeries cannot be just pretty and pristine, they're so very much better and worse than that!"

Julia has been a member of Enchanted Folk since February 2008

members.enchantedfolk.com/juliajeffrey