Future Echoes: The Art of Bruce Pennington
September 12 2011 at 11:59:35 AM  Antichrists, UFOs, apparitions, Martian worlds, rocket men, high kingdoms, prophecy and Armageddon. If you're like me, you would normally be in the mood for any of the above. But it’s rare to find the artist who could lay them out before you all out once. Bruce Pennington, born 1944, was one of the most unique, imaginative and philosophical fantasy artists of his era. His paintings, much like the late Frank Frazetta, were for many years seen mainly on the covers of UK paperbacks which set new standards of style and imagery in the genres of Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction. From the late 60’s to early 70’s he illustrated novels and collections by Ray Bradbury, Frank Herbert and Isaac Asimov. In the mid-1970’s, his work would aid the rediscovery of less-commercially successful writers formerly published in Weird Tales magazine. Fantasy artist Arik Roper has also listed Pennington as one of his inspirations. In 1967, Pennington got his first break illustrating a cover for Vladamir Nabakov’s The Defense (Panther books) and not long after he was offered the cover for Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, published by New English Library. Pennington’s stock with NEL held strong several years afterward and his artwork was featured on more covers than any other artist for its poster magazine Science Fiction Monthly.     Covers for Science Fiction Monthly ('74) illustrated by Pennington (1,4) Foss (2) and Yates (3)
Part of what made Pennington’s paintings standout, what makes them still remarkable today, are the colors and smoothness of their texture, achieved by mixing gouache paint with polymers, tissue paper and varnishes and later covering the foreground with tracing paper and a kind of rubber cement in order to apply color washes to the background with a broad brush. Only once in his career did he experiment with an airbrush.
While many of his paintings proved him an artist capable of rendering fine details, Pennington's main concern was the overall impact of a picture.     The end of the 60’s into the mid-70’s marked the next phase of Pennington’s career. Changes in the publishing industry – like the US/UK film industry - mirrored the counterculture’s dark trajectory and led to new commissions for books of a far different nature. New issues of Science Fiction Monthly failed to sell and by 1976 the magazine folded. The period’s mood was everywhere charged by occult currents. Headlines across the world carried news of the Manson family cult murders, a class of sexual deviant newly dubbed the “serial killer,” ongoing war and civil unrest. Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan was born and Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie, became a major success. Sci-Fi was out, horror back in and Pennington eagerly took to this new chance at mastering the macabre.
    The bold dreams of deep space exploration and wonders of far away worlds, colored with all hues of sunset, once so hopeful, turned now to nightmares not of this world. Bright strokes and burning horizons mark the approach of nightfall attended by daemonic beings, cthuloid creatures and skull-faced denizens of a graveyard earth as envisioned by Pennington through the outré tales of August Derlith and Clark Ashton Smith. But for Pennington, like Graham Ingels, Reynold Brown and other commercial artists with more of a professional rather than personal interest in their work, these ghastly visions were mere subjects for painting. “These are not my personal nightmares,” he once said, still believing it no less valid to “paint something ugly in a beautiful way.” His true passions, many hinted at in one way or another thus far throughout his work, had yet to find their fullest expression.   Pennington's painting for The Horror Horn beside "Macabre Eternal" by Wes Benscoter. After illustrating a series of horror covers for NEL, Panther and Dragon, Pennington began to focus his attention on more personal work based on the subject prophecy. Originally pursuing an urge to illustrate The Book of Revelations, he eventually settled on the writings of Nostradamus, especially those which complemented the New Testament apocalypse. These years of research, writing and illustration culminated in Eschatus: The Future Prophecies from Nostradamus’ Ancient Writings.
As a teenager, I first discovered Eschatus buried among hundreds of worn cooking and housekeeping magazines in my parents’ basement. A real treasure among common supermarket checkout kindling left behind by my then-college bound brother, either oblivious to or no longer interested in its contents: A vibrant feast of flying saucers, hurtling comets, gorgon idols, devilish pontiffs, angelic beings and cities burning by moonlight. “Echoes from the future” which also seem a fantastic rendering of the past, an alternate history with references to Catholicism, Ancient Rome, Babylon, Runic alphabets, Nazi fascism and Science Fiction.     Mythology rather than religion is something Pennington pursued both inside and outside his professional work. The assortments of figures and diagrams which populate his paintings in such fantastic arrangements have the quality of classic movie posters, advertising archetypes and end-time visions.
Newly post-apocalyptic, Pennington returned to illustrating covers for a variety of Fantasy paperbacks, where he found a release of stress and escape from the pressures which had mounted during the making of Eschatus. He continued as a commercial illustrator into the 80’s and experimenting with color and tone on a number of non-commissioned pieces –some more impressionistic than his trademark style. Today, Bruce Pennington is now largely retired from commercial art save for illustrating one book, Vampires, released in 2008 and a pair of illustrations which accompanied an article on Pythagoras in Philosophy Now.
As an artist linked primarily with written works, Pennington remained adamant about the unbound imaginative possibilities which pictures held, once saying, “Where an artwork scores over literature is in not being restricted by language or cultural barriers, over music in not needing the interpretation of the performer…Fantasy art is refreshing in the same way as dreams - it opens the mind to new possibilities.”  Images reproduced from http://www.brucepennington.co.uk and around the net. All quotes taken from Ultraterranium: The Paintings of Bruce Pennington by Nigel Suckling.
type: articles
keywords:
eschatology,
fantasy art,
bruce pennington,
painting,
ufos,
nostradamus,
science fiction,
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