Darrell K. Sweet: A Retrospective
It is interesting to discover that Sweet’s work graced the covers of many beloved series of fantasy books. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that most of us have probably bought a new work of fantasy at some point because one of his works of art caught our eye on the book store shelves. His paintings provided the cover art for Piers Anthony’s Xanth series, the Runelords Series by David Farland, The Saga of Recluce by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. as well as providing the original covers to Stephen R. Donaldson’s The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever (incidentally one of the first series to really get me hooked on fantasy).
After perusing Sweet’s substantial body of work, by 2005 he had produced over a staggering 3000 paintings in a thirty year career, one finds a very distinctive style. Sweet eschewed the trend towards a dark sinister realism that is characteristic of many fantasy painters today. Rather, his works reveled in color and heroic figures. His scenes and characters were often self-consciously and deliberately epic. If I were to pick a single phrase to describe his style, it would have to be “larger-than-life”. This was most evident in his color scheme, which was inevitably bright and bold. Darrell K. Sweet’s work always reminded the viewer that the work they were about to read was fantasy, and that it meant it was inextricably bound up with the fantastical.
Unfortunately, according to TOR’s art director Irene Gallo Sweet’s cover for the final volume Memory of Light was not completed at the time of his death. I’m sure it will be strange for us all to see a Wheel of Time book appear without Sweet’s characteristic art work. Yet, just as the series itself has survived the death of its author, it will inevitably come to completion without its primary illustrator. Hopefully whoever completes the art for the last book will be as successful in living up to their predecessor as Brandon Sanderson has been in writing the last volumes of the series. More of Darrell’s work can be seen on his official site. |
