Similar to Cobb, I feel like John Jude Palencar doesn’t have the reputation he deserves. Perhaps, in part, because his more recognizable work — the covers to the Eragon novels — seem to my eye to be divergent from his natural style. When I look at most of his paintings, I see an illustrative realism underpinned by a strong sense of geometry (to the point of looking sculptural), with figures and objects often arranged in symbolic-seaming tableau. He often uses palettes and textures that remind me of Andrew Wyeth (though with none of Wyeth’s off-kilter looseness). I also think about Leonora Carrington a lot when I’m flipping through Origins: The Art of John Jude Palencar (2006), but I couldn’t tell you why exactly.

My earliest encounter with Palencar was his work in Time/Life’s Enchanted World, of which “Satan’s Black School” is my favorite. I was weirded out a little years later when I stumbled across his covers for the Del Rey Lovecraft collections which, like Michael Whelan’s diptyche, strike me as both un-Lovecraftian and extremely Lovecraftian at the same time. I was similarly surprised when I realized he did my preferred covers of Octavia Bulter’s work. He’s interesting like that, hiding in plain sight until I see, and once I see, its seems plain as day. I think it’s perhaps his approach to minute texture that gives him away.

Anyway, I think Origins is out of print and slightly hard to come by, but you should give it a shot, as Palencar is a fantastic stylist and a master of a very specific, very strange atmosphere. And oh, man, look at those Tolkien illustrations, can you imagine what the movies would look like if it had been Palencar instead of Lee and Howe in the art department?