Katherine Keenum

Terri Windling’s Myth & Moor is a great source of inspiration for writers, readers, and lovers of images related to the mythopoeia. Her August 26th post on Children, reading, and Tough Magic is trove of pictures of children reading and quotations on the value of fantasy stories. It also brought my attention another of Jeanette’s younger contemporaries who studied at the Académie Julian—Florence Fuller (1867–1946). Born in South Africa, Fuller is classed as an Australian artist; for although she studied in Paris and spent time in England and India, she grew up in Australia and her most productive years were spent there. Her work is collected primarily in Australian museums. In 1905, she became a Theosophist, a reminder to me that the occult was a part of the world around my heroines Jeanette and Mattie (though not, I think, of much interest to either of them). Read More 

Today’s image is from a distressing Spitalsfield Life post on plans to build a mezzanine in the ambulatory of London’s Royal Exchange. If built, the mezzanine will obstruct views of richly detailed turn-of-the-century murals of scenes from English history by several artists. I’m appalled by the proposed vandalism, but at least the post led me to Henrietta Rae. Rae was an almost exact contemporary of Jeanette, and her mural art is a reminder of the beautiful mural work done by female illustrators and fine artists of the period (the best known in America being the the Red Rose Girls). Read More 

Always on the lookout for women artists who were working during the time period of my new novel, ANONMITY, I was pleased this morning to stumble across Clara Miller Burd (1873–1933). She was born in New York City, studied art there and in Paris, and  Read More 

Website tip: Blue Interior by artist Harriet Backer is featured on today’s Lines and Colors. I have shown here another of her interiors, a Breton kitchen, that I wish I had known when I was writing Where the Light Falls. Not only does it illustrate the Gernagans’ kitchen, it fits perfectly with Jeanette’s motif of rooms as “portraits without people.” Read More 

Mary Hamilton Frye’s illustrations for “Children and the Theatre,” which were mentioned in my last post, came to mind today when I read Kathleen Jennings’ blog post on Skimmings, with its gif compilation her own recent paper cut-out illustrations for a musical composition. Silhouettes have  Read More 

Lisbeth Zwerger is one of my favorite living illustrators, and I couldn’t resist pairing a sample of her work with a picture from the Golden Age by Mary Hamilton Frye (1890–1951). Is it just my imagination,  Read More 

The conceptual artist Catherine Chaloux tickles my fancy. Although fantasy fiction is a part of my reading and writing life, I have not reacted to her witty, luscious work as a source of stories so much as illustrations of my imaginary self. This picture combines  Read More 

Some of my favorite novels are fantasies. For a holiday treat, I read Patricia McKillip’s Od Magic. It is a lovely, lively story and I was specially interested in how McKillip interwove four plot lines. It allowed her to jump over the  Read More 

Although those of us who write historical fiction do a lot of directed research, sometimes it is serendipity that turns up the most gorgeous details. In life, chance meetings are even better. I was taking my daily walk this afternoon and ran into Linda Baker-Cimini, whom I  Read More 

Blog tip: I have just read this post on Jeannine Atkins’ new novel Little Woman in Blue: The Story of May Alcott Nieriker with great interest. And, of course, I love it that Where the Light Falls is included in the recommended reading list at the end! Read More