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Yvonne Skargon
'Spring, the sweet spring, is the year's pleasant king,
Then blooms each thing . . . '
We're celebrating blue skies and sunshine this morning as Spring seems to have finally arrived. There are crocuses sprouting in Hoxton Square, and yellow tulips brightening up our office. These spring catkins by Yvonne Skargon first appeared in Slightly Foxed Issue 29, where they adorned the contents page.
Yvonne Skargon was born on the east coast near Harwich, and began drawing and painting during her school days. At Colchester School of Art she was inspired by renowned wood engravers John O'Connor and Blair Hughes-Station to take up wood engraving, and went on to teach at the Royal College of Art. At printers W. S. Cowell she illustrated and designed books and book-jackets, but is perhaps better known for engravings of her cats, who appear in her best-selling books The Importance of Being Oscar and Lily & Hodge & Dr Johnson. She takes inspiration from her garden, and her repertoire is full of animals, plants and flowers.
Cover Artist: Slightly Foxed Issue 63, Louise O'Hara, 'Wandering by the Light of the Moon'
Louise O'Hara
Louise O'Hara is a professional mixed media artist based in the heart of Cheshire. Her style has been described as quintessentially English, romantic and nostalgic. The work she produces is influenced by tactile aged surfaces such as peeling paint on walls and fabrics that are threadbare but which are laden with memories.
Cover Artist: Slightly Foxed Issue 62, Chloe Cheese, 'Riverbank Picnic'
Chloe Cheese
Chloe Cheese makes prints, drawings and sometimes illustrations. She was brought up in the Essex village of Great Bardfield but now lives in London where she has been since she graduated from the Royal College of Art in the 1970s. In her work she seeks out the details of daily life and draws them.
Win Green From Berwick Down
'A country boy with a fossilized village upbringing and a close affinity with the natural world, I was naturally drawn to Hardy, and to this story in particular with its deliberately evocative title. And I imagined the book would be a literary extension of my own rural habitat. We lived out between the sea and the fields – where horse-gear still jingled and the farmers still laid out the harvest as they had done for centuries in house-high haystacks. Hardy's rustics were people I knew personally. In my adolescence I conducted the customary love-affair with language and literature. I mooned around country churchyards, pretending I was – not Thomas Hardy, but Thomas Gray . . .
The Medlar Tree
Howard Phipps
'Cowper kept the forces of darkness at bay by constant occupation. At first this took the form of gardening and caring for a menagerie of pets, including his tame hares Bess, Puss and Tiny. Cecil is at his most vivid…