The Artists of Arkham House

The Artists of Arkham House

STEVE FABIAN – has been interested in art and illustration since early childhood, although his first career was in the aerospace industry, where he was employed as an electronics engineer. In 1967 he submitted several drawings to an amateur science-fiction magazine, and his artwork received immediate critical acclaim for its professional technique, arresting sense of drama, and masterly comprehension of the fantasy genre. The fabulous Fabian has illustrated many books for Arkham House including: KECKSIES AND OTHER TWILIGHT TALES, THE HORROR AT OAKDEENE AND OTHERS, IN MAYAN SPLENDOR, THE THIRD GRAVE, THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF and NEW HORIZONS. He was honored in 1977 and in 1979 with the British Fantasy Award for best professional artist.

ALLAN KOSZOWSKI - When we described to several well-known fantasy and horror illustrators the kind of ghoulish cover art we wanted for S. T. Joshi's 60-year bibliography of Arkham House, all said we should contact Allen Koszowski, "The Master of Menace." The sample drawings Allen sent us bore out his uncanny ability to visually capture the kind of frightening creatures one encounters in imaginative literature. He is also very capable at rendering life-like cameos of the writers who create weird fiction.

Allen is one of the most prolific artists in his field, having published more than 2,500 illustrations for hundreds of genre publications, including Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & SF, Cemetery Dance, Whispers, Fantasy Tales, Weird Tales, The Horror Show, The Robert Bloch Companion, and many others.

A collection of his drawings will be published in the near future, with an introduction by Brian Lumley. Allen is a former U.S. Marine infantryman and a decorated Vietnam war veteran, including a Purple Heart; and he is a rabid collector of genre books and magazines. He is self-taught and prefers working with pen and ink, which allows him to create incredible detail. Allen is married, has two children, and lives in Upper Darby, Penna. He will soon have his own Website online -- www.allenk.com.

TONY PATRICK - first became interested in fantasy art when he saw those "mind-blowing Frazetta paintings on the covers of Creepy and Eerie as a child." In the mid-80's, Tony's first oil-on-canvas work began appearing on the covers of a series of Gothic and historical paperback novels. However, his "real-life" schedule and responsibilities forced him to discontinue the pursuit of his art for nearly ten years.

In 1997, Tony decided to drop what he calls "many unnecessary things in his life and restart his art with an aim less toward commercialism and more toward his pure love of fantasy and science fiction." We were so impressed by his unusual wraparound painting for FLOWERS FROM THE MOON (1998) that we immediately offered him the commission for ARKHAM'S MASTERS OF HORROR. Tony's most recent work includes THE CLEANSING.

Since completing these assignments, Tony worked on an ambitious series of wraparound paintings that revamped the look of the four premier volumes of Arkham House's definitive text editions of H. P. Lovecraft's weird fiction: THE DUNWICH HORROR AND OTHERS, AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS AND OTHER NOVELS, DAGON AND OTHER MACABRE TALES and THE HORROR IN THE MUSEUM AND OTHER REVISIONS. Tony Patrick lives in Cincinnati.

J. K. POTTER – was born in 1956 at March Air Force Base in Southern California and is largely self-taught, though the artist-photographer acknowledges Clarence John Laughlin, Jerry N. Uelsmann, John Heartfield, and Man Ray as major creative influences. Potter has illustrated numerous hardcover and paperbound books as well as magazine covers for such disparate publications as Night Cry, American Politics, and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. Over the years Potter has fashioned a mesmerizing gallery of the grotesque, worthy of Richard Upton Pickman, and in 1988 he was honored with the World Fantasy Award. His Arkham House jackets include: BREATH OF SUSPENSION, LOVECRAFT’S BOOK, JAQUAR HUNTER, THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, ALONE WITH THE HORRORS and TALES OF THE CTHULHU MYTHOS.

JASON VAN HOLLANDER - As a teenager Jason Van Hollander corresponded with Arkham House founder August Derleth and writes us that he has "collected Arkham House books obsessively ever since. Jason is widely published in many fantasy magazine, and he designed and illustrated books, maps, catalog covers and promotional materials for Arkham House, including: DRAGONFLY, THE DARKLING, COLLECTED POEMS, AND AFTERWARDS THE DARK.

His artwork has also appeared in books by Robert Bloch, Joan Aiken and Fritz Leiber, among others. Jason has been a graphic designer for several major trade magazine publishers and creates his unusual illustrations by combining many different artistic tools.

The art for the DRAGONFLY jacket, for example, consisted of a water-color painting that was scanned into a computer. Various elements were cut apart, resized, and then skewed to create both a whimsical and nightmarish view of an underground world. Final art and color separations were output to disk files. The interior illustrations combine painting, photography and computer enhancement techniques. Jason lives in Merion Station, Pennsylvania, with his wife and daughter.