posted on 20 Sep 2016

The Quiet Music of Gently Falling Snow by Jackie Morris

The adjective ‘breathtaking’ is sometimes over used to describe an art book but it is the right one for this beautiful publication because I gasped with delight at every turn of the page. I am a big fan of Jackie Morris, a prolific artist and writer who often produces her meticulous and richly coloured stories in small and standard sized books, which for me makes a link with illuminated manuscripts and the decorative traditions of the far East. But I'm so glad that this one is in such a large format because this makes it possible to really dive in and be absorbed into the sumptuous double page spreads.

The mood is set by the cover illustration which spreads across the front and back of the book. It depicts the first story ‘The Quiet Music of Gently Falling Snow’ with the lute carrying pale red haired woman wearing a gorgeous turquoise robe. She is riding a lion and is carrying a huge parasol. Already we can hear the stillness as the lion pads slowly across the deep snow past a dense forest of silver birch trees. The silvered writing in the snow at the bottom of the page does not interrupt the calm picture but adds to the overall pleasing design. This first painting reminded me of snowy landscapes by Breughel in terms of composition and there are some clear Pre Raphaelite influences at work here as well. As with all her work, there are also strong echoes of many folk and fairy tale landscapes before we even begin the story,  but the overall atmospheric effect is completely original - what an extraordinary achievement.

The magic continues and so the snow falls more heavily as the artist takes us out of the forest into the soft open fields of the end papers painted with pastel blues and yellows with a still grey hare in the bottom left hand corner looking out across the pages.

Next we run across the title pages with the hare through more snow and then pause to step outside the story into the preface written by Jon Boden which provides some interesting context for the book. He tells us that it has evolved from nineteen  original pieces of work that she painted and originally published as Christmas charity greeting cards and mug designs for Help Musicians UK, previously the Musicians Benevolent Fund over a period of sixteen years ( these are illustrated at the end of the book).  An introduction written by Morris follows where she explains that every image therefore contained either references to musical instruments or musicians. Some of the characters reappeared in subsequent paintings and she writes that:

 ‘As they gathered over the years the stories flowed between the cards and the images became a window into a strange world’.

I liked the way that the double contents page includes twelve of the illustrations on a small scale that provides the narrative framework that follows.

The poetic words that follow take us back to the scene on the cover emphasise the dreamlike atmosphere and the loose story begins based around the mysterious woman who ‘dropped her glamour of invisibility and began to play’. Next we are treated to the second gorgeous painting on a double page spread that bleeds to the edges of the page.

 As with all the illustrations, there is so much to look at. There are three extravagantly decorated boats on a sea that is almost purple guided by a woman flying above with moth wings, two of the boats seem to have exotic looking buildings on them and there are huge stately polar bears depicted in close companionship with the several musicians. There is plenty going on in the equally purple sky as well including colourful balloons carrying other boats with buildings and a swan carrying someone. If you look very closely you will see tiny gold stars strung across from left to right and other delicate gold touches traced on the clothes and buildings. In the text that follows we learn that the travellers are bringing music back to a land where it had been banned for centuries. Soon we come ashore and now seem to be somewhere that is reminiscent of Venice with many windowed buildings and golden lanterns in a painting that is soaked in pinks, orange and ochre.

And so the fabulous and complex story continues but I am not going to try to summarise it here, in fact I’m not sure that you need to read it all because the illustrations have got so much to tell you in themselves that go beyond what is written in the text. This seems to be the overall intention of Jackie Morris who writes in the introduction:

‘My hope is that the threads of stories will wrap around the dreams of others and spin fine gold threads to catch the imagination’.

She has certainly succeeded in doing this for me. I also know that I would dearly love to possess at least one of these exquisite paintings to hang on my wall so that I can escape into the strange world that she depicts whenever I feel inclined.

 

Karen Argent

September 2016