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Writers don't usually have a choice about
who does the cover for their books, but it's a pretty safe bet that most
of us would choose Michael Whelan. He has earned a houseful of Hugos over
the years for his art, and they are well deserved. I remember seeing his
paintings at a convention art show some years back, and thinking about his
reputation as the top artist in the field. I knew then and there that he
got his reputation the old-fashioned way... he'd earned it.
I've been blessed (and I don't use the word lightly) with the privilege of having four of his paintings as covers for my books. Three of them were portraits. The first one, for Catspaw, was of Cat, a telepath who's had a life of his own inside my mind for decades. Michael came as close to seeing him through my eyes as anyone could who wasn't a telepath himself.
The other two portraits were the "mirror image" covers for The Snow Queen and The Summer Queen (for which he won another Hugo, for Best Cover); the fourth cover is for Dreamfall, my most recent book.
I was once upon a time an art major, and the more I study Michael's portraits, the more layers of image I discover, drawn literally and figuratively from the heart of the novel. (An art background allows me to appreciate the work of someone like Michael in the same way that years of aerobic dance give me a sense of what professional dancers do on stage: i.e., you know what you could do, and it gives you some idea of how difficult it is to do what they are doing, even if they make it look easy.) Anyone who has seen one of Michael's slide presentations is aware that he knows his art history, as well.
And anyone who has ever met him or his wife, Audrey, knows that not only are they two of the most successful people in the field, they are two of the nicest. (And they once paid Jim and me one of my favorite compliments about our firstborn, Jessi—they said, "She's the prettiest baby we've seen since ours!" Considering that their daughter was about the prettiest baby I'd ever seen, I was in new-parent heaven!)
At this point I can't even remember how long it's been that we've all known each other; I only know that since we moved to Wisconsin, Jim and I miss the rare chances we once had in our mutually hectic lives to spend time together.
I recently got a copy of Michael's magnificent new art book, The Art of Michael Whelan, which includes not only cover paintings, but also some of the work he has been doing strictly for himself. Among them was a painting of two green hills, and a secret door.
I sat for a long time looking at the picture, at the limpid arc of rainbow that lay so perfectly on the mystic landscape.
When I returned to the picture later, the rainbow was gone. After staring at it for a while, I realized finally that the colors had been created by light shining through a crystal in my window. It was as if I'd witnessed the rainbow fingerprint of a Muse, that touch which randomly gifts a human being with something more, inspiration, creativity, a unique way of seeing and of sharing their vision with the rest of us.
The Muses are not always careful about who they choose—the good, the bad, and the insufferable have all been gifted by their touch, down through the millennia. But this time a Muse shared her gift both wisely and well. Meet Michael, and see what I mean.
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