For the first time in 3 years Don Maitz and Janny Wurtz together at one show
Patrick Roberts
http://www.paravia.com/JannyWurts ) have been added as featured artists to
the Dragon*Con 2002 Art Show. This will be will be the first time in three
years that both of them have appeared together at a show. Together with the
Dragon*Con 2002 Art Show Guest of Honor Alex Grey (
http://www.alexgrey.com ) the Dragon*Con 2002 Art Show is shaping up to be
one of the best ever!
Here is some history behind Don and Janny.
Don Maitz
Don Maitz has produced outstanding work in exploring paths of fantastic
realism. For twenty five years, he has produced narrative paintings
containing fantasy, science fiction, and historical images. His career
began with New York City book publishing. Don's artwork evolved within this
market and has expanded into many other areas. He has received considerable
exposure as the original and continuing artist of the Captain Morgan Spiced
Rum pirate character.
Joseph Seagrams & Sons, The National Geographic Society, Bantam DoubleDay
Dell, Warner Books, Random House Publishing, Watson Guptill, Penguin USA,
and Harper Collins Publishers are some of his clients. His work has been
produced for the limited edition print market with images released by Mill
Pond Press, and the Greenwich Workshop. His works are internationally
recognized and acclaimed. He has twice won science fiction's accolade for
best artist, the Hugo award. He has received a Howard award from the World
Fantasy Convention, a Silver Medal and Certificates of Merit from New York's
Society of Illustrators, and ten Chesley awards from his peers in the
Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists. His paintings were
included at NASA's 25th Anniversary presentation. He helped initiate the
first ever museum showing of fantastic paintings at the New Britain Museum
of American Art in Connecticut where the public broke all previous
attendance records. His work has been included at the Park Avenue Atrium,
the Hayden Planetarium, the Society of Illustrators - all located in New
York City. His works were included in two large exhibits of fantastic art -
at both the Delaware Art Museum and Canton Art Museum. These popular
exhibits inspired a follow up show at each museum. The San Diego Maritime
Museum, the Orlando History Center, and the Key West Custom House have
enthusiastically displayed his pirate paintings in exhibitions pursuing that
theme.
Don Maitz attended the Paier School of Art from 1971-75, where he graduated
top of the class, since, his work has enhanced various published formats
including: book, magazine, cards, record album, compact disk, poster,
limited edition print, puzzle, collector plate, and computer screen saver
programs. Two art books of his color paintings have been reproduced titled
Dreamquests, The Art of Don Maitz containing ninety images from his varied
career; and First Maitz a collection of paintings with the artist's insights
and notes on technique. Both editions have sold out. Besides illustrating
many book covers by authors such as, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, C.J.
Cherryh, Raymond E. Feist, Allan Dean Foster, and Michael Moorcock, he
illustrated a limited edition publication of Stephen King's novel,
Desperation. Don also has illustrated two short stories and a British
edition novel written by his wife, author/artist Janny Wurts. The May 1999
issue of "National Geographic Magazine" contains a commissioned pirate
illustration that also appeared with other of his works on national
television's Dateline NBC. His work is featured among ten artists in an art
book titled Fantasy Art Masters. He has worked as a conceptual artist on an
animated feature film titled, "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius".
In addition he served as guest instructor at the Ringling School of Art and
Design in the 1985-1986 semesters and has lectured at colleges,
universities, and conventions all over the United States.
He lives in Florida with his wife, Janny Wurts, the noted fantasy novelist
and artist who paints covers to the books she writes. They share a studio
home with four cats and three horses.
Janny Wurts
Janny Wurts is the author of eleven novels, a collection of short stories,
and the internationally best selling Empire trilogy written in collaboration
with Raymond E. Feist. Her current release in her Wars of Light and Shadow
series, Grand Conspiracy, and her forthcoming hardcover, Peril's Gate, are
the culmination of more than twenty years of carefully evolved ideas. The
cover images on the books, both in the US and abroad, are her own paintings,
depicting her vision of characters and setting.
Through her combined talents as a writer/illustrator, Janny has immersed
herself in a lifelong ambition: to create a seamless interface between words
and pictures that will lead reader and viewer beyond the world we know. Her
lavish use of language lures the mind into a crafted realm of experience,
with characters and events woven into a complex tapestry, and drawn with an
intensity to leave a lasting impression. Her research includes a range of
direct experience, lending her fantasy a gritty realism, and her scenes
involving magic an almost visionary credibility. A self-taught painter, she
draws directly from the imagination, creating scenes in a representational
style that blurs the edges between dream and reality. She makes no
preliminary sketches, but envisions her characters and the scenes that
contain them, then executes the final directly from the initial pencil
drawing.
The seed idea for the Wars of Light and Shadow series occurred, when, in the
course of researching tactic and weapons, she viewed a documentary film on
the Battle of Culloden Moor. This was the first time she had encountered
that historical context of that brutal event, with the embroidery of romance
stripped from it. The experience gave rise to an awakening, which became
anger, that so often, our education, literature and entertainment slant
history in a manner that equates winners and losers with moral right and
wrong, and the prevalent attitude, that killing wars can be seen as
justifiable solutions when only one side of the picture is presented.
Her series takes the stance that there are two sides to every question, and
follows two characters who are half brothers. One a bard trained as a master
of magecraft, and the other a born ruler with a charismatic passion for
justice, have become cursed to lifelong enmity. As one sibling raises a
devoted mass following, the other tries desperately to stave off defeat
through solitary discipline and cleverness. The conflict sweeps across an
imaginary world, dividing land and people through an intricate play of
politics and the inborn prejudices of polarized factions already set at
odds. Readers are led on a journey that embraces both viewpoints. The story
explores the ironies of morality which often confound our own human
condition - that what appears right and just, by one side, becomes
reprehensible when seen from the opposite angle. What is apparently good for
the many, too often causes devastating suffering to the nonconformist
minority. Through the interactions between the characters themselves, the
reader is left to their own discretion to interpret the moral impact of
events.