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From the book The Land of Froud:
Introduction by Brian Sanders, 1977
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Brian Froud was born
at Winchester and lived for his early years in a part of Hampshire,
which although only thirty or so miles from London, is an area
abounding in pockets of unspoiled natural countryside. His most
cherished memories of this period of his life are of solitary
explorations after school hours, and during vacations, in these
natural areas, and of building his own private worlds and sanctuaries
in the undergrowth. He still wonders at lack of permanent scars
which he should have received from tunneling through gorse and
hawthorne bushes. At his first attempt he failed to pass the eleven-plus
examination, the passport to a grammar school. However, after
his family moved from Hampshire to Kent and he had spent a year
'cramming', he re-took the exam and gained the coveted grammar
school place. He still remembers the year waiting to go to grammar
school spent in an urban secondary modern school and the realization
that there were people in the world totally different to himself. |
| He attempted to leave school at
the age of fifteen (the then legal age), but was persuaded to
stay on to take Ordinary and Advanced Level examinations before
gaining entrance to Maidstone College of Art. |
At Maidstone, Brian began as a
student in the painting school, but gravitated to the graphic
design course and after a three week trial switched courses. He
gives as his reason for doing do, that in the painting school
he felt it was regarded as being of greater importance to discuss
painting than to actually paint, whereas in 'graphics', so many
areas were opened up to his imagination. He was allowed to explore
many and varied aspects of the arts, so widening his personal
vision and then to develop along his chosen path without too much
hindrance from authority.
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One of his friends,
illustrator Liz Moyes, who was a year behind him on the same
graphics course, remembers that his peer group regarded Brian's
work very highly, respected his need to live in his own world
and recognized his originality. Brian, however, readily admits,
because of his strong sense of tradition and the continuity
of knowledge passed on from generation to generation, to being
strongly influenced by other artists: the painter Richard Dadd,
many sources in history
ranging through Greek, Druid, Celtic, German 15th Century to
the Pre-Raphaelites, the
great illustrators Arthur Rackham,
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Edmund
Dulac, and the Robinson
brothers. Both
the figures and the crane on the tower in plate 32 owe
much to the latter, but all have left a strong mark on much
of his work.
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| Maidstone is not far from the
village of Pluckey in Kent, the home of Brian's parents, so while
at college, he commuted daily by motorcycle. Pluckey is reputed
to be one of the most haunted villages in England and is supposedly
haunted by an assorted ghostly population as well as its human
one. From white ladies to dishonored monks and various other lost
souls, Pluckey has them all. On a road into the village is a dip
before a fairly steep hill, the site of a 'hanging tree'. |
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| One night, returning
home late after visiting friends, his motorbike engine mysteriously
cut out at the top of the
hill. His imagination began
to run riot. It was some minutes before he realized that he was
simply out of gas, but he affirms that he was so terrified by
the experience that he never made the trip again without checking
his gas tank. |
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On leaving college Brian joined
Artist Partners in London, where I first saw his work. My agent
had invited me into his office and asked my opinion of a portfolio
which had been left with him by a student. I use the term portfolio
in the loosest sense of the work, for there were very few drawings
enclosed between the covers of a stiff folder. Instead
I was shown what appeared to be a number of pieces of miniaturized
hand luggage, apparently designed for a midget to use in a science-fiction
film.Each piece had extraneous
attaching bulges, dials, pockets, flaps and extrusions.I
fumbled with the thongs and catches of a black leather box,
about ten inches high. The
front of the box fell down and I was confronted with a grotesquely
modeled, laughing head, which I swear, WINKED AT ME. Each box
brought forth further surreal glimpses of a world of fantasy.
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As he had no base to work from
in town he was invited into the building. A
number of illustrators who are represented by Artist Partners,
although very much independent freelances in their own right,
choose to work for convenience in central London, and a loosely
knot group use studio space rented from A.P. Brian
was 'thrown in at the deep end' and has never been out of work
since. It says a great deal for his integrity and confidence
in his own abilities, that from the early stages of working
amongst a group of highly professional artists he did not succumb
to following in their wakes. Especially as they included such
major talents as Michael Leonard and Roger Coleman. He learned
from them, but his own personality loomed large.
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The studio area
which he had been allotted had a partition around it. Gradually
a transformation began to take place. Crenelations appeared
at the top of the partition, making it look like a castle wall.
Dead plants began to 'grow' up it. Within his area lumps of
gnarled and weathered tree stumps turned into castles. Frogs,
toads and various animal derivatives vied for space on ledges
with beautifully made samurai on horseback. Gnomes, goblins
and faries appeared everywhere. Princesses sat sexily on cans
of rubber cement. In short, a Froud world grew in a space eight
by twelve feet. It was always Christmas with snow on the window
panes.
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My own children
sought excuses to visit me in the studio that I shared with
Roger Coleman, but really because it was only a flight of stairs
away from Brian's room. They were fascinated, for each time
they came in there would be something new to see; towers added
to the castles, artificial cobwebs, a drawbridge dropped from
the plan chest to the back of a chair--operated by a 'Heath
Robinson--Rube Goldberg' device that defied gravity, but seemed
to work.
It was difficult
to understand how Brian managed to work in the small amount
of remaining space, but work he did. How to explain the media
that he used at that time: airbrush, plaster, modeling clay,
plasticine, plastic, grit, gum, paint, paper, canvas, cloth,
cardboard, hardboard, leather, metal, stone, cement, ink, wood,
even earth and sand, not forgetting needle, thread, and button,
sometimes all together on the same creation.
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From
time to time I would put my head through his doorway to say that
I did not believe in faries in the vain hope of keeping their
population explosion from getting out of hand (for according to
J. M. Barrie, a fairy dies every time someone says that they do
not believe in them). Roger and I even redesigned the label of
an aerosol can of shaving cream to read--FAIRYCIDE, Kills all
Gnomes, Goblins, Trolls and Woodland Folk with one squirt. It
featured an elf lying on its back with feet and arms in the air.
We left it as a Christmas present in his room. Retaliation was
swift. Brian co-opted Liz Moyes into helping him make a Christmas
Manger to be unveiled at out Christmas Party. Roger appeared as
an unmentionable animal in the stable and I featured as a bald
Joseph. For New Year I made a caricature drawing of Brian sitting
on a toad-stool. He said nothing, just took the idea and did a
much better version (plate 45) and used it as a piece of
self promotion advertising.
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After about three
years his space having become infilled to such an extent, in
order to gain more room in which to work, he moved from the
Artist Partners building to work at home. We missed him, but
he still visited us frequently as A.P. continue to act as agent
for him.
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He was also at this time beginning to re-evaluate
what he wished to do, feeling that he needed most of and time
to explore several projects that he had been mulling over for
some time. Two years ago, a mutual friend, Alan Lee, whom Brian
had met and worked alongside at A.P. and moved with his family
to Chagford in Devon and offered Brian the opportunity of sharing
his house there. Brian did so and this has brought about excellent
developments in his work.
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The village of Chagford is set on the edge of
Dartmoor. An area of wild moorland encrusted with moss covered
ancient stone walls, high tors, tumbling rocky streams, and
wooded dells. In short, an ideal setting for Brian's world of
'Faery'. From the outside the house is a modest Victorian cottage
set back from the street in a garden. From the moment that one
crosses the threshold, guarded by a moss and lichen jeweled
hand pointing skywards, from amid a welter of muddy wellington
boots, a different land begins.
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Two families, the Lees and the Frouds live here.
Real children side by side with Brian's family, the Troll king,
his brother and their mother. The mother has a hand hole in her
back and when Brian holds her they become one. The puppet fits
snuggly to him and there is a deep affection between them. Brian
the wizard surrounded by his animate creations, discussing them
with a child who believes in them as much as he does.
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Walls, shelves and floors are crowded with books,
toys, found objects and constructions. Ghosts, fairies and pictures
of goblins abound. Through the window the back garden is dominated
by a dead tree, stunted but beautiful, dragged for miles from
the moor to this resting place. Even in high summer it lends
the feel of winter to its surroundings. This house has cosseted
the creation of the illustrations for 'Master Snickup's Cloak'
(plates 8, 9, 10, 11) and many other illustrations in
this edition.
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Brian begins work almost as soon as he gets up in the morning,
pausing only to have a cup of coffee. he goes to the drawing
board for a couple of hours before taking a break. He tries
to work from nine until six for five days a week, but often
breaks into Saturday mornings. He says that he hates the actual
painting part of the process, doesn't like working in color,
but prefers monochrome. This accounts for the close tonal quality
of much of his output and the subdued affect imbued in much
of it.
His ideas are only sketched loosely on the board and the illustration
begins to grow. He feels that if he draws a conception too tightly
from the start, he quickly becomes bored with the idea, and
therefore prefers to let the drawing develop as he works.
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When he gets 'stuck' he walks to the moors, not stopping to
sketch, but occasionally taking a photograph. The knowledge
gained this way shows through in his paintings, as for example
in plate 25. That stream so beautifully observed and
painted has its source on Dartmoor. Even in this picture, however,
it can be clearly seen that everything that he extracts from
nature is sifted by the Froud mind and inlaid with his imagination.
Humor dominates subject matter that could easily be too grotesque.
The menace of the stand of trees in plate 29 is tempered
with fun. The expression of the chicken in plate 31 tells
us that there is no chance of it ending in the pot -- and oh!
the evolutionary logic of the Troll in plate 15 who has
developed ears to hold a pot on its head.
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Although Brian now lives and works in Devon, I
still see the progression of his work as it passes though Artistic
Partners. It improves constantly, yet subtly. All of the original
exuberance remains, but the finish has matured. Texture is no
longer used for its own sake, but to describe rock, wood, water,
metal or organic growth, etc. His use of watercolor as a medium
has refined, possibly through working in such close proximity
to the excellent watercolorist and draftsman, Alan Lee. The
airbrush is now used to greater effect, not as an overall technique,
but to create luminosity in a fairy's wing, a fleshtone as in
plate 34 or mist over water in plate 33. There
is a sexuality in much of his work, often disguised with childlike
naughtiness, but very sophisticated none the less. All of these
examples show an artist constantly developing, and leaving us
with the sure knowledge that there is much to come.
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The philosophy of his life and work can be summed
up by his own words. 'Each book or story is like a journey,
there is a beginning, a middle and an end. My paintings are
the same...I am always thinking, what is over the hill? What
will happen next? There is invariably a character in my pictures
who is the viewer, sometimes its me, and no situation is too
monumental for that character to overcome'. At the same time
Brian realizes that his 'FAERY' imagination is often used as
a retreat from facing up to responsibilities and feels sure
that he will have to pay for it some day. We can be sure though,
that like that little character with the outside sword and survival
kit, (plate 17) who looks very much like Brian, no bogeyman
of the woods, or real life for that matter will succeed in overcoming
him.
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Brian is not yet thirty years old. May he continue
to enchant us in his lifetime yet to come and in doing so
never become a ‘grown-up’.
BRIAN SANDERS
LONDON 1977
Thanks to Greg Weir and Martin
Schuler for emailing me the scanned pages.
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