Illustrated Blog Posts

Here's to the old wives. They could keep a hospitable house, dispense herb-lore, and tell tales only a fool would disregard. They had a rapt audience in the Brothers Grimm, who recorded their knowledge of customs and of cautions, of Faërian folk and of country folk; tales so deep in the "cauldron of story" that no one knows the ancientry of their origins. Any diminishment of the old wives is highly suspect, in my opinion. Does it stem from the very bad myth that women are les

It is said that Galadriel is the most powerful elf left in Middle-earth in the late Third Age, but I would suggest that Glorfindel is the bearer of the most sub-created holiness. He is the one whom J.R.R. Tolkien called "almost angelic"; a being so magnificent that, after he sacrifices himself to enable the escape of many from the fall of Gondolin, he is re-embodied and sent back to these shores. He shows us elves at their very best. He is a healer whose very hand relieves pa

Here and there, someone communicates something that makes you actually clap your hands and raise your voice in a cheer. You cannot help yourself! It happens to me when Théoden King musters the Rohirrim, when a brother of the Oxford Oratory at J.R.R. Tolkien's old church gives an astoundingly resonant homily, when Max McClean's portrayal of C.S. Lewis in The Most Reluctant Convert invites us to follow our Great Captain through the crack in the wall, and it happened twice for m

I am incredibly grateful to The Tolkien Society and all of its voting members for the outstanding honor of this award for Best Artwork in 2026 for my painting of "The Long Winter, 1158: Gandalf Helps the Hobbits." There are so many gifted Tolkien-inspired artists and illustrators giving their hearts to the depiction of J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium and I feel it deeply to have received such distinguished notice for my work. My congratulations to all the short-listed finalists