This is taken from the Site on the Web
wear Brian Froud speaks for himself
about his art and how it comes about in the making.
I strongly suggest that you visit this Site
where you can read the full version of what you are about to read here

Also on that Site you will find out how and where to obtain his Book,
~Good Faeries, Bad Faeries~

Once upon a time, I thought faeries lived only
in books, old folktales, and the past. That was
before they burst upon my life as vibrant,
luminous beings, permeating my art and my
everyday existence, causing glorious havoc.

In folklore, they say that those who can see
the Faeries are blessed with second sight.
Where some people perceive only empty fields,
a man or woman with second sight can see a
host of faeries dancing in a ring or the shining
entrance to a faery hill. Where some notice
only an ordinary street of shops or a marketplace,
others see faeries in human disguise,
paying for market goods with magical coins
that will turn into mere stones and leaves
when the faeries have gone

Through painting pictures and listening to the
spirit of the beautiful land where I make my
home, I have discovered that the second sight
is not limited to people in old folktales. We can
all learn to have the sight to see the faery world
around us. It shimmers in every autumn leaf
and lingers in every cool blue shadow; it gives
every stone and stream and grove of trees
vibrant, animate life. Second sight can also be
called in-sight: into the faery realms, into the
very heart of nature and into the mystical world
that lies deep within the human soul.

By experience I have found them to be
irrational, poetic, absurd, paradoxical, and very,
very wise. They bestow the gifts of inspiration,
self-healing, and self-transformation...but they
also create the mischief in our lives, wild
disruptions, times of havoc, mad abandon, and
dramatic change.

Humans have long maintained close daily
connections with the faeries. In centuries past,
we've acknowledged them by many traditional
names: boggarts, bogles, bocans, bugganes,
brownies, blue-caps, banshees, miffies,
nippers, nickers, knockers, noggles, lobs,
hobs, scrags, ouphs, spunks, spurns,
hodge-pochers, moon dancers, puckles,
thrumpins, mawkins, gally-trots, Melsh Dicks,
and myriad others. Just as they have many
different names, they appear to us in many
different guises. They are shape shifters, highly
mutable, for no faery or nature spirit has a fixed
body. In their essence, faeries are abstract
structures of flowing energy, formed of an astral
matter that is so sensitive as to be influenced
by emotion and thought. In their most primal
form, we perceive them simply as pulsing
forces of radiant light, with a glowing center
located in the region of the head or heart.
(In the more highly evolved faeries,
the eyes are more strongly defined.)
Responding both to mythic patterns and to
human thoughts, these abstract forces delight
in coalescing into wings and flowing drapery,
taking on shapes that reflect the human,
animal, plant, and mineral worlds.

Copyright � 1998 by Brian Froud