Publishing critics argue about whether Josephine Wall‘s paintings are art or kitsch, but the artist herself doesn’t think about it – she just paints in the attic of a house in Dorset, England. They are some of the most famous artists of our time. Her unusual drawings grace galleries in London, Tokyo and New York; they are printed on postcards as book covers.     

About Josephine Wall

Josephine Wall has depicted old fairy tales of old England: emerald hills and heath, fairies with dragonfly wings, graceful elves, wise wizards and beautiful queens. According to the artist, she has been fascinated by the strange and wonderful since she was a child – she has always loved connecting whimsical images the way Surrealists do. “Imagination allows me to create the world the way I want it to be. I think it’s a deeply ingrained part of my character because I’ve always been fascinated by fantasy books, film and science fiction as well.”     

Josephine prefers acrylics and colors with different shades of purple, blue shades of green and yellow. But the artist never uses black, and creates darker shades by mixing burnt umber with ultramarine blue. When asked how long it takes to create a painting, she answers: “a lifetime.” A painting usually takes two to four weeks to complete; interestingly, Josephine Wall never sketches in pencil, but paints directly on canvas. Her style is intuitive – many things can change during the work, and often the final version of a painting is far from the original idea.    

Josephine Wall can be seen in paintings for as long as she can remember: she already realized at the age of four that she wanted to dedicate herself to painting. The artist’s father is a former intelligence officer, a professor of French philology and her mother is a member of the “Women’s Institute”, which is a member of the “Women’s Institute”. Josephine sold her first painting at the age of sixteen after graduating from Bournemouth University Art College, and after graduating she began working for the famous Poole Pottery Company, which designed Delphis ceramics. She created figurines of insects, animals and fairy tale creatures from John R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and British mythology.    

 
Josephine creates ceramic figurines, sculptures, stained glass and even decorates her clothing line; however, painting is her real passion, a job she continues to do every day. But that doesn’t stop me from being an artist and painting. It is this obsession with color and form and love of form and color that is what this style is all about! As soon as I am away from my easel for too long, I get anxious and eager to start painting again as soon as possible.     

As soon as Josephine Wall asks which of the great artists influenced her technique in the past, she recalls Salvador Dali and other prominent artists. Arthur Rackham, for example, was one of the most famous book illustrators of the Victorian era. We will look closely at Rackham’s image and his contribution to the art of book illustration, as the similarities between their drawings and those of Josephine Wall can be talked about at great length.

And, of course, Arthur Rekham was the maestro of golden age book illustration. He showed almost all of the classic children’s literature written in English. In 1907 Alice in Wonderland, with drawings by Rekham, went to the second highest number of reprints after John Tenniel’s book. Rackham drew illustrations for Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, fairy tales by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, and plays by Shakespeare. James Barry’s tale of the flying boys.   

Rackham’s paintings are in neutral tones. They are characterized by soft lines, subtlety of color and artistic craftsmanship. Unusual drawings that are dominated by gray and white shades. At first glance, these drawings do not look at all like the riot of colors Josephine Wall; but look closely: the intertwining of tree branches with the foaming wave of the sea or milky mists – a fairy-tale world of fairy elves (or dragons) and the wizard. Rackham, the devil’s servant, made no secret of the fact that he drew inspiration from the mythology and nature of his native England: he transferred hills with valleys of forests and cold seas to his illustrations.

Josephine Wall does the same – she lives in a beautiful place, only a few miles away from the woods. He always finds nature as his source of inspiration.     
A laughing Josephine told me in an interview that she has dozens of ideas swarming in her head every day – far more than she can draw. Time is my greatest enemy; there are never enough hours in the day to draw all the images in my head. And I feel like I now take it upon myself to keep painting as long as I can. In retirement, they remain artists.