Janny Wurts: Kaleidoscopic Life
(Photo by Don Maitz, courtesy Janny Wurts)
It started with a “frivolous annoyance.” The teenaged Janny Wurts decided she was sick of fairy tales where the youngest and the blondest always won out, and you could gauge the virtue of a character by the lightness of his or her hair. She already viewed life as a kaleidoscope of overlapping motives, interests and perceptions that shifted every time you adjusted your point of view. But it took years of travel and training in disciplines as diverse as fine arts and archery, history, hard science and swordsmanship to prepare herself to tell the story that became the Wars of Light and Shadow series.
At Dragoncon 2002, Crescent Blues talked to Wurts about the history and experiences that shaped her many arts. The conversation ranged from the killing field of Culloden to the oil paintings techniques of the Old Masters, with a double-shot of prescience on the side.
Crescent Blues: You’ve got a wonderful career as a writer and a wonderful career as an artist. Which came first, the fiction or the arts?
Janny Wurts: They are both so hopelessly tangled up with each other, I couldn’t separate them. The number of times I had an idea for a story then wanted to paint it to see what it looked like, or the times I tried to do a painting just to make a picture and halfway through the characters started talking, “While you’re here — ” and suddenly I had a story… The one time I did a painting and said, “This has no story,” Marion Zimmer Bradley came up to me, and she said, “We want to run this for the cover of our magazine. Could you, please, give us a story?” So I had to write a story about it. So the pictures and the words are tied together. I really don’t feel any one thing came first.
But you didn’t decide to pursue this in college.
Oh, I decided to pursue this long before college.
But your course of study in college was much broader than writing or art.
It was. I couldn’t go to an art college, because at that time there was a general overriding impression that art students were flakes. That wasn’t me. Nonetheless, I had to go to a college that had conventional parameters, but I went to a very unconventional college where you contracted your education.
At the time I left for school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. It could be writing. It could be art. It could be any one of three or four or five different things in the sciences. So I had to pick a college that was strong in all those things. I was actually thinking I would go into science, until I got in there and realized that wasn’t going to work. There were too many things that didn’t fit in the box.
I looked at oceanography. I looked at astronomy. I looked at biology. I looked at all kinds of the natural sciences, and I ended up the college lab technician for telescopes. I ran the telescopes at night. Too many times when I saw something, and there’d be a full astronomy professor right there, and I’d say “What is that?” And he’d say, “We don’t know.” And they weren’t even curious. So what do you do with the things that don’t fit in the box?
In addition, the scientific mode of thought tends to limit thinking. (I think we’re starting to run into the edge of that. It really is very constricting.) And I realized to get anywhere in the sciences, I was going to have to do only that to the exclusion of everything else. And there were certain questions I was trying to ask and areas of research I wanted to go in that were not acceptable, because, basically, we can’t measure those things yet.
So I said, “You know if I write stories and paint, I can encompass everything in my life. No matter how radical or how strange or how different the idea is, I can write it in fantasy, and nobody’s going to mind. I’m not upsetting anybody’s boat.
I left science, because I was thinking outside the box way too much, and I’m glad that I did. Science is lovely. It’s wonderful. I still get scientific journals and read them. But there’s a very narrow opening that scientists look at the world through.
Peril’s Gate and the whole Wars of Light and Shadow series are very much “outside the box” in terms of their depiction of good and evil. Was its genesis in any way related to your college experiences in science?
I had the idea for this story before college. I thought I would write part-time and work in some scientific field as a full-time job, but that’s not how it worked.
So what is “good?” That’s a absolutely scary question, because what is good for me is not necessarily going to be good for you, because your viewpoint is going to encompass other things. So I’m not exploring good and evil. I’m exploring what happens when you look at the bigger and bigger and bigger picture.
An event or character is going to constantly change. Your reference scale is going to constantly change, and that’s what [the Wars of Light and Shadow] does. Depending on how big your panoramic view of what’s happening is, in the end, ultimately, you’re going to realize you never are equipped to make a judgment call like that, because you never have enough information. Because there’s always that piece you don’t know, and that could change your entire opinion.
So you read this book, and you’ll like a character — or you won’t like a character until you see him from a different angle, and you realize that maybe you do like that character. Even if they’re totally awful and they behave very badly over here, there may be a redeeming quality to them over there. So your viewpoint into the character constantly shifts, and it’s a factor of your consciousness and your awareness.
Have you found that as you developed the Wars of Light and Shadow over the years that your own viewpoint on the characters began to shift?
I think it’s a dangerous thing if your perceptions stop shifting. To me, that’s the day they nail me in the coffin, and even then, how can I prove it? So there’s no way I’m going to draw that box around myself.
So if you say to me, well, I set out to write [Peril’s Gate] this way, and I stayed there…Life is a kaleidoscope, and each time you get bumped or jostled, it changes.
Do you find that the image of the kaleidoscope resonates in your painting as well as your writing? When you’re painting, does the painting shift as it goes along, for example?
I don’t give sketches to my art directors. Usually, I just give them the finished piece, because I like to evolve my thinking before I present it.
I would say that the two mediums are very different, because the word is more symbolic in some ways. Music — that’s real direct. It hits you, and you’ve got it. Painting is one step removed. You’re taking in an image, and since so much of your unconscious and subconscious mind works off of images, you’re talking beyond what you can accomplish consciously. So pictures are going to hit a whole different register of a person’s awareness.
A word is a symbol, and everyone is going to interpret that symbol slightly differently. On the other hand, it’s an extremely precise symbol. So you can really shave the meaning and the impact of what happens on that page pretty tightly. Not perfectly, because everybody brings their own baggage to a scene. This person loves the drunken character, because he thinks beer bashes are great. This person had alcoholic parents and was beaten, and he or she can’t stand that character, because he drinks. You bring your own stuff to it. But with a word, you can really auger in on a point and just nail it.
That’s partly why the language in the series is so intricate, because I want you to experience more than just what happens next. I want you to feel it. I want you to remember it. I want it to affect you like you were there. So the series is written in a great deal of detail to set that up. You literally have to slow your thoughts down to read these books, and that makes the impact, when events happen, ever so much greater.
Is the lyricism and intricate language of the Wars of Light and Shadow something you strive for in all your books, or do you prefer to suit the voice to the subject matter?
I think that the power of the mind is huge when you can tap it on more than one level and more than one sense. Because I’m a visual person and I do music and I write, there’s an enormous range of sensitivity to the environment. When you can pull enough pieces of that together and put it on the page, the impact of the event for the reader is much more graphic and more direct.
People don’t forget my books. If they finish them, they do not ever forget them. Where [readers] run into trouble is when they try to over-simplify it and hurry through.
In one sense, it was a conscious choice, but in another, it was not. I did not set out to do it this way. I did not sit down one day and logically, coldly say: “I’m going to slow your mind down so that you take in an audio-visual experience through the written word.” That’s exactly what I’m doing, but I didn’t set out, in cold blood, to do that. The material demanded it. The only way I can describe it is, when I try to write it, it blocks if I don’t do it that way.
Other kinds of writing, other things I write, I write differently. I write in a simpler style. This one doesn’t [work that way], and the only way I can describe it is to say that I know when I hit it, because it rings like a bell.
I know when it’s right. There’s an internal rhythm to the words. It’s designed to be read aloud, as well. But mostly, it’s the feel of what’s happening on the page, and you do have to slow down for it. I’m often writing to a degree of complexity that requires some time. Yet this is a fast-paced commercial market where things are supposed to fly off the page, and some people get impatient with it. That’s OK. I forgive them, but that’s not what I’m trying to do.
Your handling of the language in the Wars of Light and Shadow series reminds me a little bit of the way J.R.R. Tolkien handled language in The Lord of the Rings. Was this intentional?
People say to me, “You must sit there with a dictionary on your desk all the time.” And I tell them that my dictionary’s full of silverfish, and the only time it ever comes out is when I have an argument with a copy editor over a word usage — and usually, I win. [Laughs.]
I didn’t set out to make the language this way. I read and read and read. I literally read the library. So all the words that are on those pages, I knew before I wrote them down. Those were just the precise words that fit my meaning. The books go through ten rewrites to make sure I’ve got the most refined form. And I do go through a lot of cutting in my rewrites, but do I set out to write in a really complex language and stretch people’s minds? No.
The Wars of Light and Shadow is definitely a saga. When you were first developing the storyline in the days before you got to college, did you know it was going to be this complex?
No. It’s like when you drop a snowball down a hill, and it turns into this monster boulder. It starts with the seed of an idea, just like everything does.
I remember making a very conscious decision whether to pursue this or not, and I can remember the moment when I said, “Yeah, I’m going to write this story,” and it changed my life. But I don’t think anything that complex ever springs into existence full grown. It very quickly acquired enough complexity that I had to respect this and take my time with it. But it didn’t start with anything more than the thought that I’m going to write about a guy who’s total light and a guy who’s total shadows, and they’re going to have a head on. Then I’m going to turn it on its head so you’re going to root for the guy who’s total shadows, because I’m sick and tired of the earnest blond always winning.
So it started really with a frivolous annoyance. I was sick of reading all the fairy tales where the blond, youngest always, blah, blah. I’m going to do this differently. It stopped being frivolous right there. But it’s always going to have that. Some readers get irritated, because they keep expecting the charismatic blond guy to be the good guy. And when it doesn’t happen, they say, “When are you going to get around to the real story?” And I keep telling them, “You’re in it. Take your blinders off.”
The funny thing is, perception being what it is, a person could read the entire story and still see it in terms of blond good guy/dark-haired bad guy. History defines a hero, but the person who knows the truth isn’t necessarily the person who writes the history.
That’s exactly what I say in the prologue. You decide who you think is the good or the bad — if you dare to use those labels. You’re going to find when the entire thing is said and done is that you can’t use those labels.
And I don’t think you can dare use those labels in our real life world today. That’s where we get ourselves in trouble all the time. “I know what you mean.” No, you don’t. How carefully did you listen to start with, and how carefully did you listen to the guy next to you and next to him and next to him?
And what was the character of the person who was telling you that, anyway? Did they have a character you respected? Did they tell the whole truth? Did they know the whole story? We take so much for granted. It’s frightening, and then we end up killing people over it.
That is the frightening part. But you almost have to take some things for granted, because one person cannot encompass the universe.
Oh yeah? If we’re going to look at good and evil, the scariest thing for me is people saying, “I know what’s good for you. My system will fix your life. Put up and shut up.” Think about that. If I know what’s good for you, you don’t have any voice anymore. You have no respect, and I have no respect for you.
Oversimplifying anything is dangerous, and now that we have a global [economy and political interdependence] we really have to think about that with wider minds or we’re going to wind up in some trouble. And it’s tragic trouble. It’s unnecessary trouble.
You very much strive for accuracy in describing war and battles, the forces leading up to conflict and the face of conflict itself. In contrast to the folks who view fantasy as one long, glorious crusade, all of your work tries to capture the grit and despair of the battlefield. What sent you down that path of accuracy?
Several things. The first is that I don’t believe a killing war solves anything. It makes us better killers. It makes us better haters. It doesn’t teach us how to heal. It doesn’t teach us how to master peace. Until we decide to stop using violence to solve a problem, we’re going to beget more violence. It’s going to take an act of courage to stop it.
That’s part of my reasoning. The one that really blew the doors off, though, was I wanted to make the battle scenes accurate. I’d done enough outdoor work and enough physical exercise — I was an archery champion and a number of other things, and I took fencing — that I had enough knowledge to know that I wanted to get it right.
I was mixing time periods, because technologies moved in a different time frame in the world that I was writing. So I had to, essentially, study all the battles that were ever fought roughly from the time of the Romans to the time when gunpowder began changing the way battles were fought. I read a lot of books.
Right about the time I finished that research, I walked into a documentary film on Culloden Field. For your readers who are not familiar with that, it was the real fall of Clan power in Scotland. Two very different cultures in conflict using very different kinds of arms.
That particular battle has been so over-dramatized. It’s been used in mainstream fiction. It’s been used in romance. But to see it in a documentary film as it actually happened tore me wide open. Essentially, the British opened cannon fire on a bunch of ill-dressed, freezing cold people with swords, downhill. And the commanders of the guys with swords were so inept that they had their forces badly placed, and the order to charge never happened. So for two hours, the Scots got shredded with cannon fire before anybody did anything.
Seeing that, then reflecting back on all the battles that I had just read about and all the so-called “great” wars, I realized they were all the same. There wasn’t one that was any different. It was superior force wiping out a smaller force, a superior tactic wiping out an inferior tactic. These guys were inept, and these guys were not, or it was a God-awful blood bath where they butted heads, and everybody died, and nothing was accomplished.
I realized that a good cause had nothing to do with martial might. Who had the sharpest weapon or whoever killed the most people had nothing to do with solving the problem that was on the table to begin with. It sure didn’t beget any understanding, and it sure didn’t heal anything.
But I’m not going to write a book which condones this. Our educational system teaches us that violence solves the problem. The media tells us violence solves the problem. The books, our fiction, the movies, our entertainment — all across the board we learn this fiction that harming somebody else accomplishes something. I don’t believe that it does. I don’t believe that human beings need to be knocked in line with force. Understanding and giving would do the job a whole lot better. So I decided to write a book that would rip the cellophane off, and these battles are not going to entertain you that way. And they are not going to solve the problem.
There will be people in the battles that you will root for or not. Your opinion may change. But I wanted you to walk away with that sense of what it would be like to be there. If you talk to the vets who have been in battle, they’ll tell you what it’s actually like. I don’t believe in hiding that. I think it’s a dangerous, dangerous way to think that war is the way to solve a problem, and that it’s a “sanitary” or “surgical” strike. There’s no such thing. Somebody dies and there’s nothing sanitary or surgical about it. There’s nothing “surgical” about somebody spilling the guts out of somebody else.
But your sense of accuracy goes beyond the battles. You’re meticulous of the details of everyday life — the way people handle horses, the way they hunt, etc.
I wanted to bring you a graphic experience. I want to put you there. I want you to go there. You’re not just going to read these books; you’re going to experience them. Most of the things in these books I’ve gone and physically done, because there’s a radical difference between living through what the character is going through and what you imagine they might be. I’m touching on areas of the mind where the senses cannot go, areas of the mind where science cannot measure but which are still real, or they still have a validity. I’m trying to make the fabric of the story as real as I can, and if I didn’t go out there and do a thing, I had an expert who did.
Where you fencing, riding and taking archery before you started to write fantasy, or were these things you started when you realized that you needed them to tell your stories properly?
Some of the things I had done first. I always lived restlessly. I believe it makes you a better writer if you go out and experience the world. Some it I chose to go and do, because I wanted to create something. I did a lot of world traveling, because I wanted to write fantasy, and I said, “If I haven’t ever experienced another culture or learned to speak the language or eat food that was strange or walking in a culture whose history is completely different from ours, how am I ever going to invent a world without having seen what it’s like to be outside my own?” It took four or five overseas trips to acquire the mental agility to be able to imagine it.
Do you think that’s a function of how your mind works?
How do you mean?
Do you analyze a goal in advance to define the number of steps you need to achieve it, or do you just set a direction and move towards it?
I usually set a direction and see what comes in through serendipity to get me there. When I feel that there’s a pitfall — gee, I can’t write that scene, because I don’t know — I go out and do it. But do I sit there with a checklist do I sit there and mastermind and orchestrate every step? Not to that degree. I know exactly where the story’s going. I always have. I know exactly the steps it’s going to take to get there, so there’s nothing out of hand. I’m not digressing from the plot one bit. These guys who say I’m going to write an endless series are totally wrong. That will never happen. I do know where I’m going.
But I also believe you can’t micro-manage. You have to keep your eye on the bigger picture, and you have to leave the mind free to see the bigger picture that you can’t, because you’re focused on this little puzzle piece over here.
So it doesn’t bother me when something crops up in the story, because I know it’s a long story. By now, I’ve been thirty years in the planning. I definitely know where everything goes. But in the early stages of planning, I didn’t always know how it was going to all weave together. I kind of believed on one level; on another, I already knew. There was a feeling that I was following a trail.
So the story knows itself, whether or not the characters know it.
But the characters know themselves. They get on the page, and they know themselves. There’s no doubt about it. They have their own way of going about something.
So many times, people say to me, “Oh, how did you invent this character?” And I say, “I didn’t. The character invented itself.”
Then they say, “Well, read this scene in Ships of Merior where the Master Bard gets killed.” Arithon sees his friend and master murdered right in front of him, and everyone expects to see him tear the place apart, literally, because he’s got the power to do it — big vengeance trip. And he doesn’t. I’m not going to tell you what happens on the page. I’ll let you read the scene.
People say, “But how…?” And I say, it was perfectly logical what was going to happen, because here’s the traumatic event that impacts this character. Given who this guy is, what he believes, what he thinks, what his disappointments are, what he wants out of life, where he’s frustrated — given the pattern of his character, you drop that model into the chute, you’re going to know what course that character will take, because you know what that character values. You know what their weaknesses are. You know their strengths. So, to me, it’s intensely logical those characters know where they’re going, and I know where they’re going, because I know who they are.
But people say, “Your plots are unpredictable.” I don’t know how, because the characters are acting true to themselves. Maybe that’s why they’re unpredictable, because I’m not the puppetmaster. Given this guy’s take on life, what’s he going to do in this room, at this time, with this impact? And out it comes. The character speaks their words.
So you see your fiction as more character-driven and idea-driven than plot-driven.
What do you call plot-driven?
Someone who has a story they want to tell and bends the characters to fit into the story. In a character-driven story, the story somewhat tells itself.
Pretty much it is, but you can start with a beginning, and you can stop at the end.…
I don’t know. I think that the mind is so much richer than people give it credit for. I think we’re taught in school that you have to micromanage everything. I think we’re taught in school that you’ve got to keep checklists. And I think as a result, we shut down 90 percent of what we could do if we said, “Here’s where we want to end up. We don’t know how we’re going to get there, but once you’re focused on where you want to go, you’re mind automatically sorts into the picture all the things that are going to help you get there. So you’re going to perceive — you train your perception, to get you there.
In effect, if we taught our kids to set goals and help them set goals, [we could] sit back and watch them do it, because the mind is made to work through things like that, but we don’t take advantage of it. That’s one of the maddening things I see in our society. We’re locking ourselves in, because we have this silly concept that we have to have all the answers before we start on the path. You don’t have to have any of the answers; you just have to know where you want to go.
It takes a certain amount of being relaxed and willingness to let things happen, but we’re not training our kids to do that. We’re training them that they have to have all the answers up front and express them, and it’s frustrating [kids] and scaring them to death.
Because nobody has the answers.
But they’re not equipped to find the answers, because our education system doesn’t give you what you need to pursue them.
They never did.
It could. Hampshire College, the college I went to, came as close as you’re going to come. Basically, you contracted your education: here’s where I want to come out of the chute. This is what I want to do when I’m done. Here are the books I’m going to read. Here are the courses I’m going to take. Here are the people I’m going to talk to. Here’s the field experience I’m going to cover that isn’t in the books, and here’s how I’m going to show you I figured out how I’m going to get where I want to go. This is what I’m going to show you I have the tools to do it.
That school taught you to get knowledge. So anything I want to do, I know how to get the knowledge to do it. That’s an education. You don’t do that with grades. You don’t do that with parrot back, and you don’t do that with: “I’ll tell you what you have to know.” You don’t. And when kids come into that school, it takes them a while to get it, but by God, when they graduate, the list of what they’ve accomplished is pretty impressive.
Did you immediately start writing and painting professionally when you got back from your world trip?
I knew what I wanted to do, and I saw people ahead of me go and get high-paying jobs and never do what they wanted. I decided I wasn’t going to go that route. So I took on a string of part-time, little things. And I had a low rent. You’ve got to make sure you’ve got a low rent. I did all the little stuff I could do that would feed into getting where I wanted to go, until eventually it did provide a living.
It took about four years, but I was always independent. I did not live off my parents. I did not live at home. People talk about not having two pennies to rub together. For a while, I didn’t. But I think it’s important that if people are thinking, yes, they want to work creatively for the rest of their lives, not to give that away.
Did you have one event that you look back on now as your “big break,” or was it a string of events that let you know you were on the path to what you wanted to do?
It was a string of events more than one big thing that happened, because I knew where I wanted to go. The people around me didn’t. I didn’t necessarily let on that this is where I wanted to end up. They would’ve found it ridiculous.
I saw that I could take simple, small drawings to conventions and sell them. So I could, essentially, learn to draw on the fly. So I’d do one convention a month and take artwork, and that would apply to a certain amount of my living.
I did what amounted to paste-up and lay-out, the stuff that people do on computers now, but back then they did it with wax and tape. But that paid me $20 – 25 an hour, so I could earn very quickly enough to pay the rent as a freelancer. So again, staying as a freelancer, staying free-wheeling and not being locked down, I was able to make good at it. And the graphic lay-out led into book lay-out and design. So it was all things that were going to give me “basement” knowledge. I didn’t want to stay in the basement, but I’m grateful I had that background now.
Then I said, I can’t go to publishers right off the bat. I can’t draw well enough. But over here, this market’s starting up. They don’t have the kind of budget the big publishers do. They can’t afford the first-rate artists. So I’ll make my start there. I’ll accumulate a portfolio, and my originals will get better and better, and every month. I’ll go to that convention, and I’ll hang next to the big guys, and I’ll see where I am in the continuum. Oh, my figure’s weaker here. I’m going to have to take another course and draw.
That was my college education coming out. I could comparison check where I was against the professional market and say, my prose isn’t special yet. Don’t send anything in. Just keep writing. I had four finished novels before I sent one out. So when I did sell one, I knew how to do it. It wasn’t like: “Great God, now you have to write another book. How did you do the first one?” I knew inside out how to write, and how to make a plot flow, and I had the knowledge that they would finish. I’ve finished books. So that when I’m under the gun and there’s a contract, I’m not confused, because I’ve done this four times. It’s amateur work. It will never see anything except the inside of a file cabinet in the dark, but it taught me.
I didn’t get the instant, overnight, lucky break, but that doesn’t say that you couldn’t. Somebody else may. That might happen to them, and you roll with that.
I always ask because I’m curious about how artists and writers achieve their success.
I had a dream, and it would not die. I was willing to starve for it. I was willing to work slave wages for it. I was willing to get rejected again and again and again until I got there. I was willing to constantly reevaluate everything I did. Failure is a valuable thing. Why did she fail? Being able to determine whether it really was that the work was bad, that you really did not know your craft yet, or was it because this person’s taste was different. In other words, you have to learn the game — when to stand your ground and when to say, “This is a piece of garbage, and I need to go back to the drawing board and learn more.”
Or: “I need to learn my market better.”
Whatever the case may be, a failure is always an opportunity, and if you can’t look at it that way, go do something else, because you can’t afford to be right all the time and still be in the creative arts.
How did you develop your painting style? Did you go from pencils straight to oils? Did you work first in watercolors?
I started with watercolors and inks, and I had to abandon them very early. Watercolors and inks are very cheap, and I could work on them in a small space, but the market required more photo-realism. That required oil paints or acrylics, so I learned those. Then I chose oils out of preference, because I like them better, even though they have flaws, even though they don’t dry as well, even though, even though, even though… To me, they’re more expressive. They’re more alive on my brush. Acrylic requires very, very mechanical brushwork.
I went through a lot of different techniques before I arrived at the one I use. To someone starting out, I say, do what makes your heart sing and stay with it. You know which technique works for you. Go for it.
Do you like working in the photo-realistic style, or would you prefer to be doing something else?
A number of decisions go into the style — what you are calling photo-realism versus texture. Texture can take forever to dry. You cannot get them up to a photographer, drag them around conventions, bring them up to an art director, scan them — you name it. It’s too impractical to handle them. I work on a masonite, because it’s less easily damaged.
When you use the word “photo-realism,” I stick a little bit, because I don’t like using photographs, and I generally don’t. I work right out of my head. I do not have a model for my characters, sorry. No one person. It’s right here. [Wurts points to her head.] I know what they look like. I just keep refining the painting or the drawing until they get there. I know when they look right, and I keep messing with the pencil until they do.
I want to create an experience where you’re looking through a window into another place. I don’t want the distraction of the texture. I’m not doing a sculpture. If I wanted texture, I’d do sculpture, and I can do sculpture. There’s no reason I couldn’t do that head in 3-D.
The third reason is I like to use really high-grade oil paint. If you use a thick, heavy technique, it gets really expensive really fast. The longevity of the paintings is going to be less, because all those different layers of paint are going to crack or get damaged. Thinner layers of paint are going to stay more resilient. They’re more stable over time. That’s pretty much why I don’t like a textured finish.
So it’s a personal decision as well as a professional one.
That and the practicality. That painting, once it’s done, has to go and get photographed in different places. It’s got to travel a bit. The photographer is not in my backyard. It’s got to be shipped, or it’s got to be sent. To endure the sheer, physical handling, I need something that’s going to dry in 24 hours.
Do you use any special techniques to get it to dry or do you just make sure that the paint is thin enough that it will dry in the allotted time?
I use a medium that’s practically antique. You can’t buy it anymore. They won’t sell it off the shelf, so I have to create it. Literally. I have to buy the raw copal resin from Africa, and I’ve got to get a chemist to boil it up to the required degree, or I’ve got to do it, and it’s a messy, messy job. Luckily, I paint thin, so I don’t need too much. I don’t use any dryers, because the chemical dryers continue to dry the paint forever. Eventually, it turns the whole surface to powder and it falls off. I use natural substances that are going to last.
That particular medium will be dry in 24 hours, and it will undergo a chemical change in 48, and it will not come off with turpentine, absolutely will not come off. I could put a damar varnish over the top to protect the paint layer. Once I’ve done that… Once I took a clean t-shirt and some turpentine, and I poured [the turpentine] on the painting and [Wurts mimes scrubbing on a flat surface] as hard as I could, and even the fine little highlights on the hair — I’m talking hair-fine lines — didn’t come up. The rag was white, clean except for the varnish. Once it goes through that chemical change in 48 hours, the paint will not come off.
Some of the old methods were superb.
The older artists really had a familiarity with their materials. They knew how to make it from scratch. They understood what they were handling, and they understood how it worked. They weren’t going into the art supply and buying it for $5.69 off the shelf. I wouldn’t have been as curious about what went into my paints if they hadn’t stopped making what I wanted to use commercially.
So you discovered your medium while it was still commercially available.
((c) 2001, Janny Wurts, courtesy of the artist)
It was [supposedly] pioneered by a man named Frederick Taubes, but it wasn’t really pioneered by him. People have been using copal resin for years and years. But copal got a bad name because it does go through a chemical change in 48 hours, and if you use it as a varnish layer with no paint in it, it turns black over time. So it got this rotten reputation for destroying paintings, because if you use it as a varnish, it will eventually darken. But if it’s added to the paint, it becomes suspended in the paint medium, in the paint pigment, itself. There isn’t enough in there to turn dark, and the paint itself will color it. I talked to some museum guys, who said, “If you’re mixing it with the paint, it’s not going to affect it at all. Just don’t use it as a varnish.”
So copal got a bad name as a varnish, and Frederick Taubes’ lifetime of research sort of got thrown in the trash can. Wrongly. He was a brilliant man. He wrote a book called The Mastery of Oil Painting. Permanent Pigments used to sell [the resin] with his products. It makes the paint handle unbelievably well. It changes the nature of the paint profoundly. It gives that misty sky. The trademarks that you see of my style are largely due to that medium. Taubes stopped making copal resin, because it got a bad name.
What’s it made of?
Copal comes from the sap of a tree in Africa.
[The loss of the product] was very sad. So when I couldn’t buy it anymore, I turned to Don [Maitz — Wurt’s husband] and said, I can’t throw away all the painting I’ve learned to do all these years, because they can’t sell my medium. And I sure don’t want to go to a damar-based varnish, because it isn’t going to set up like this stuff does. It’s very, very tough. We’ll just have to repeat Taubes’ recipe. It was very roughly sketched in Taubes’ book — not in the kind of detail you really need, so we had to trial-and-error it. I think there’s a guy on the Internet who’s making it. So you could possibly buy it off the Internet now.
Most of the people you paint seem to have a family relationship. They share similar jaw lines, similar styles of eyes and the like. Was this intentional, or was this the result of who the character happened to be?
In the Wars of Light and Shadow series, two characters are half-brothers, so there is a family relationship.
I’m thinking of paintings that are not from the Wars of Light and Shadow series.
Probably just the way I perceive the world. There’s a lot that goes into a picture — you want to make something beautiful. Even if you’re drawing a character who’s shadowy, dark or scary, you still want it to be a beautiful scary. I think everyone has their own concept, stylistically, of what’s elegant to them. Some of that is going to come out in the way I write and paint. When you can have it your way, and you can paint the line here and have it look really awkward or you can paint the line here and have it look beautiful, why not go for the esoteric value?
You’re pursuing your own standard of beauty.
Right — what rings right to me, what pleases my eye. Everybody is different. That’s what’s so incredibly rich about our individual resources. Everybody is going to have a different mode of expression.
I know you enjoy painting your own works, and I can’t imagine a happier gift than to be able to bring your own words to life visually. But when you can’t illustrate your own stories, do you have any particular writer whose work you enjoy illustrating?
At this point, if it’s not an author that I really love, and it’s going to take time away from my own work, I’m not going to do it. When Guy [Gavriel] Kay called and asked my husband Don [Maitz] and I to collaborate on the Fionavar Tapestry [three-book series], I just jumped on it, because I love his work. That’s such a visual work, and the symbolism is so deep. It’s just fantastic.
So it depends on the book. If somebody wants me as an illustrator, and if I like the work, and something in it intrigues me that I feel I can express what’s on that page and bring something to it of value to me, then I’ll take time away from my work and do it.
In other words, time makes it an either/or situation.
If I’m painting your story, then I’m putting one of mine on the shelf to do it. I certainly don’t want to sound arrogant or like I’m not willing. I’m very willing to work in someone else’s viewpoint. Some of the richest stuff I’ve ever done has been when I stepped outside of my own little hut and tried on somebody else’s shoes. The trick is that there has to be some attraction or interest in it, because I’m beyond the point where I want to do any job just to make the money. It’s a waste of my time. If I can’t bring 100 percent of what I can bring to something, if it doesn’t grab me, why bother?
I’m past the point in my life — and I have been probably since high school — of having somebody tell me, you have to do something “just because.” There’s no “because” more important than the question: am I going to give this 100 percent of my effort, my time and attention? Is it going to bore me? Is some piece of me going to be switched off? If the answer comes back that I can’t put 100 percent in, I don’t want to die for 20 percent. Then you’re living at 80 percent or 70 percent. I’m not going to give up that piece of myself, even for five minutes. It’s not worth it.
I’m making this point strongly, because as we grow up we’re taught it might have to be that way. “You can never have everything you want.” “You might as well put up and shut up.” I don’t believe that’s true, and I would urge people, don’t buy it. Don’t buy it. It makes for a very boring life.
What’s it like collaborating with your husband?
It’s easy for me, because I’ve done it before. I pretty much knew what a collaboration involved, and I had hit the walls with it and passed through to the other side where, look at it, you’ve got something that was totally different, because you had two minds. And I understood very well the concept that you’re not driving your own train, and when the two trains wreck, you’re going to get a third track that’s better than either one of you — or different — and you’re going to love it just as well. So don’t pay attention to the train wreck. Look at the tangent.
[Don had] never done this before, so it was a bit of a discovery for him to find his way, but I think he gladly did it. Once he realized, no, you’re not in control of this picture, you’re going to have to let go, it went quite smoothly. So we’d do it again, I would guess, if the right project came along.
You’ve mentioned in interviews that music plays a very important role in your life and that you frequently listen to music when you’re writing. How many instruments do you play?
I’ve got an attic full. They’re predominantly stringed instruments, but I just do it, because I enjoy it. I do little odds and ends, playing this or that. I wouldn’t say you would stop the world to hear whatever I was playing, but I’m usually competent enough to do it in public. I do it for my own enjoyment. I really get a bang out of sound.
It’s a very direct medium. It’s comparatively easy to compose a song. (Now, you’ll notice, I didn’t say compose a good song.) It’s very direct. You don’t have to go through these layers and stages of saying, “Now, I really want to express that, and I’ve got to use a symbol to get there, and that symbol’s not right, and this symbol’s not right.” With sound, the note’s either right or wrong, and you know which way to push it. It’s very fluid.
Bagpipes seem to have a lot of wrong notes.
Who have you been listening to?
I was very fortunate. I love bagpipes; not everybody does. When I went to Scotland after high school, I heard a solo bagpiper playing in the pass at Culloden. That man knew how to play. I heard the instrument tuned as it was supposed to be tuned and played as it was supposed to be played. The harmonics that come off that instrument when it is properly tuned are mind-blowing. Literally. I think people hate pipes sometimes, because they do alter the synapses of the brain.
So when I came back from that trip, I said, I’m going to learn how to do this. Like most people in this country, I took the first teacher I could get. That was a mistake. But I worked really hard, and I got passed on to another teacher and another, and eventually I wound up with a teacher who was taught by a world-class player who has won world-class prizes. He is really an incredible musician. Now [bagpiping] has become a year upon year study. I’ve learned a great deal from this man.
When you say pipes don’t sound that great, you’ve never heard them the way they’re designed to be played. It’s an art form. When those pipes are tuned, they will not sound sour. They will not sound out of tune. They will not hurt your ears.
They will alter your state of mind. It’s like a meditation. They will shift [your perceptions]. You’re either going to hate that, and come out clawing and screaming, or you’re going to follow it for blocks.
I imagine it’s also a function of the context in which the pipes are played. If they’re played in the pass at Culloden…
A well-tuned set of pipes will sound great almost anywhere. If it’s correctly tuned — even loud, even in an enclosed room — it’s not going to destroy your hearing. It’s when they’re not tuned properly, and usually people do not set them up properly.
There are people who have written on the music of the pipes. You basically have nine notes with no sharps and flats. It’s a pentatonic scale. You have three drones and a precise combination of scale notes, which are not tempered. Those drones create the most harmonics [per] fifth that it is possible to have. It’s not arbitrary where they set those pipes up.
When you listen to a well-tuned set of pipes, as the scale notes shift and it’s not a tempered scale, you’re going to hear those harmonics come and go. The sound is going to affect you. It’s going to lure you. It’s going to create harmonics in your body. You’re going to feel it happening.
I’ve tuned pipes in what amounted to a tiled bathroom, which is the god-awfullest place to tune in the world. But with all that reflective surface, you really understood what each of those notes is doing.
The original music the pipes were meant to play is not what you hear on the street. It’s not the marches. It’s not the dance tunes, hornpipes and jigs I’m going to do tonight. They wrote what they call the Great Music, which is a state of emotion, and it puts you in an altered state of mind. When you hear that done as it’s supposed to be played, taught by a teacher who knows how to teach it — you cannot learn it off sheet music — you’ll understand why they banned the pipes as a weapon of war.
And I’m not saying that, necessarily, it altered your mind toward war. It didn’t. It maybe evoked a totally different emotion. But you would fight for that, to keep that.
It’s a phenomenal instrument. The knowledge [about the pipes] is getting better. There are lots of people who know the band music, so the average person says, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard pipes.” But if they hated it or said it sounded out of tune or it was sour, they didn’t hear a set of pipes that was tuned and set up. They absolutely didn’t.
How did you get involved in piping for the Dragoncon parade?
They asked me. They said they had this parade, and I said, “What good is a parade without bagpipes?” They said, you’re here, giving a concert Saturday night, could you play Saturday morning? What was I going to say, no?
Anything else you’d like to add?
Not really. If anybody has any questions that aren’t covered in this interview, they are more than welcome to look at my website. Email me a question. Just don’t send me an attached file. If it’s got a file attached, I’m going to throw it out.
Jean Marie Ward & Teri Smith
In addition to editing Crescent Blues, Jean Marie Ward writes for a number of Web-based and print magazines, including Science Fiction Weekly. She is the author of Illumina: the Art of Jean Pierre Targete (Paper Tiger) and several short stories, including “Most Dead Bodies in a Confined Space” in Strange Pleasures 2 (Prime Books). Her first novel, With Nine You Get Vanyr, written with Teri Smith, is scheduled to be released by Samhain Publishing in late 2006.
By day a financial assistant, by night the assistant editor for Crescent Blues, Teri Smith somehow finds the time to write and sell short stories (“The Visit” in Let Us Not Forget: A Tribute to America’s Twentieth Century Veterans, “Magic” in Strange Pleasures III and “Dragon Bait” in the upcoming Strange Pleasures VI and work on her first novel. Rumors that she is totally crazed are mostly untrue.