A Witch's Dozen - DJ
- A WITCH'S DOZEN - DJ. - An acrylic painting on a 12 x 14 size illustration board. It appears on the book dust jacket for, "A Witch's Dozen," by Janet Fox, published by Wildside Press and W. Paul Ganley in 2003.
Whenever I get a new commission I try to do something stylistically different for the cover painting, and I'm satisfied that I did with this one. The only truly "different" artist in the SF field that I know of was Richard Powers, who began painting eye-opening covers for Ballantine's paperback books back in the 1950s. His covers had a fresh, new, strange look to them, unreal, often unrelated to the text except that they captured the essence of science fiction in general. His artwork was ground- breaking, and uniquely attractive.
However, I was once part of a discussion panel, on stage with Powers and Vincent diFate. It was at a Science Fiction convention at the Playboy Club in NJ. I came away from that experience thinking Powers was either a nut or a moron. As the first speaker he spent a few minutes telling the audience that he never read a science fiction story in his life, he never intended to, couldn't stand the stuff and didn't understand how anyone could! The audience chuckled once or twice and when he was done there was an awkward silence followed by a spatter of polite clapping. When my turn came to speak I prefaced my talk by complimenting Powers cover art, but as to the talk he just gave, I asked the crowd, "Did you ever hear anyone, anywhere, say something that stupid"? And added a few more negative comments about his speech before giving my own talk on SF illustration.
Some time later, in a hallway near the elevators, Powers came running up to me, laughingly saying, "diFate and I were just interviewed on TV and you weren't there, Ya! Ya! Ya!" and ran across the hall to an open elevator. That was the only time I ever met him, for all I know he may have an odd sense of humor. I hope my opinion of him is wrong.
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