Joan Wyatt

Wyatt's depictions of the landscape and architecture of Tolkien's Middle-earth are really very good: by turns ethereal and otherworldly, then dark, brooding and menacing. Her figures, on the other hand, are either charmingly naïve or clunky and amateurish, depending on your point of view. I incline towards the former, remembering Tolkien's own limitations as an artist of the human (and non-human) form.

Whenever I re-read The Lord of the Rings, I keep this album nearby and refer to the illustrations at the appropriate point in the text to lend a bit of atmosphere and to compare the image in my mind's eye with that of Ms Wyatt's paintings. Given that she has paid close attention to Tolkien's descriptions, it is always interesting to note the differences from my visualisations that the same words can weave in another person's imagination.… (meer)