Posts tagged Book
Illustration For Mark Haddon's New Novel
Illustration For Mark Haddon's New Novel

In exciting news this week, Mark Haddon’s first novel in seven years was announced. The Porpoise is an “ambitious and dazzling” tale based on Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Over land, air and sea, richly described layers of time and place fold and weave. Publishers Chatto & Windus (an imprint of Penguin) describe an “exhilarating adventure, an immersive story” transporting readers from the present day to ancient times and back again.

Haddon states “after The Pier Falls was published, my agent commented that I write novels in which nothing happens and short stories in which everything happens. In The Porpoise I seem to have combined both models and written a novel in which everything happens.”

Top left: digital prototype of the front cover | Top right: full width of the artwork to be converted into jacket form | Below: detail from Folds (gouache on wood, 2016—2018)

As a fan of the author since childhood, I was humbled to have been approached by Suzanne Dean – the extremely gifted Creative Director of the Penguin Random House Group – to work with her on the artwork for the book. We used Folds as our foundation: completely re-working it layer by layer, mirroring the structure of the book itself. Lettering was hand-stencilled and painted in gouache, as were the motifs and stylised porpoise shown here. See more in the printed book in May (2019). It’s been a real pleasure to work on this project, and I urge you all to pre-order.

A deeply affecting and beautifully-written tale about a family – a woman, a man and a child – apparently lost to one another, who must journey through an unstable world, to find a place they can call home.

Mark Haddon is author of the 2003 award-winning novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, which was subsequently adapted in 2012 for the stage. His most recent novel The Red House was released in 2012 and his debut collection of short stories – The Peir Falls – followed in 2016. I am currently listening to the latter whilst painting, brilliantly narrated by Clare Corbett & Daniel Weyman. Incidentally, I most often listen to books whilst painting.

David CassIllustration, News, Book, Mark Haddon, Suzanne Dean, Chatto, Publisher, Designer, Novel, The Porpoise, Penguin, Vintage, Penguin Books, Chatto and Windus Publishers
Perimetri Perduti: The Book
Perimetri Perduti: The Book

I'm delighted to present Perimetri Perduti. This has been a massive task, but absolutely worth it. The book will be launched in the British Institute of Florence during November 2016 (opening Nov 4th), and in The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh soon after (January 20th). A huge thank you to all those who have contributed to the book, and supported it, you know who you are I hope.

“A combination of records of and responses to the catastrophe of November 1966, Cass’s thoughtful and moving pieces are all the more powerful in that they are made by someone who was not yet born when the flood waters hit Florence.”
— Julia Race: Director of the British Institute

Perimetri Perduti by David Cass

Perimetri Perduti by David Cass

David CassBook, Art, David Cass, Perimetri Perduti, Art Book, Artist Book, Florence, Flood
Studio: Stow
Studio: Stow

These analogue 35mm stills document my ever-changing Stow studio. Captured with a 1984 Canon AV1, these images are an incredibly important aspect of my practice. Over exposed, or with expired film, these images document small moments, that – when taken together – illustrate not only how I work and where my ideas come from, but also the hoards of antique objects that inspire the creative process.

Wherever I've worked over the last six years (I've had studios in Edinburgh, Glasgow & Brussels; I've made work in France, Spain & Italy too) I've always returned here to Stow in the Scottish Borders to draw exhibitions and projects to a close. 

 
 
“These new photographs on old film effect a curious folding of time. They have a quality of age, so that today looks like a postcard from years before. As [his] paintings enact an encounter of solid things, lodged in time and place, with endlessness and timelessness - the momentary glimpses of memory, the seascapes’ unending motion, represented on particular objects with particular histories - so the camera’s lens opens, and ‘now’ is captured on film that dates from ‘then’.

There is a motif of journeying and standing still, represented in a number of [his] photographs ... See here the warm interior of the studio, objects slant-lit, gathered in their taxonomies, bundled, piled, and at rest.”
— Author Ian Tromp
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David Hewson: Author of 'The Flood'
David Hewson: Author of 'The Flood'

In collaboration with The British Institute Florence, I'm putting together an exhibition that looks at the history of Florence's 1966 Great Flood. I've been working on this project for around three years now, and hope that its climax will fall on the month and year that mark the 50th anniversary of this catastrophic event: November 2016. Below, internationally renowned author David Hewson (The Killing) describes his own critically acclaimed response to the flood, in relation to my project:

"In a single night in November 1966 the birthplace of the Renaissance was reduced to a sea of mud as the Arno burst its banks, engulfed some of the most famous and historic buildings and sights in Europe and took the lives of more than thirty people."

"And yet, as I discovered when I came to write a novel partly set during this extraordinary period, the event is now largely forgotten outside Florence itself, overshadowed in the public imagination by the dreadful aqua alta in Venice at the same time. The city, its stalwart people, and the thousands of angeli del fango who flocked to Florence to help the city recover deserve better. During many visits to the city while I was writing The Flood I was astonished to see how the disaster continues be visible on the face of the twenty first century city, from the signs in the street marking the level of the water down to more subtle effects, among them the restoration of the damaged masterpieces in the Brancacci Chapel to remove the prudish additions of earlier centuries."

“Four years on from working on The Flood David Cass’s evocative paintings took me straight back to that terrible night in November 1966, a timely reminder of the fragility of beauty against the elements of nature, and the defiant human spirit that swept away the mud and restored Florence to glory. I hope they find a place in the heart of the city fifty years on from the events that inspired them.”
— David Hewson
David CassFlorence, Firenze, Flood, David Hewson, Author, The Flood, Book, Audible, Writer, Exhibition, November 2016, Nature, Mud Angels, Proposal, Show, Italy