Froud Quotes & Sayings

I always believed that the picture itself should tell the story. — Brian Froud

I started studying as an artist, but I got fed up with the fact that you can paint terrible pictures and if you explain them in an erudite way it's called great art. I thought this was rubbish. — Brian Froud

The myths and legends about Faerie are many and diverse, and often contradictory. Only one thing is certain - that nothing is certain. All things are possible in the land of Faerie. — Brian Froud

Voices in the forest tell of dark and twisted enchantments - as dark and twisted as the roots and grasping branches of the trees themselves. Even the most gnarled tree is eloquent in the telling of its own tale. — Brian Froud

I had a job as an illustrator, and I wanted to change the direction of my work. I moved to the country, and immediately I started to paint fairies and trolls. — Brian Froud

I feel that what you should illustrate is the space between the words. It's the betweenness, the otherness, that gives depth and dimension. — Brian Froud

Fairies are becoming much more popular. I see fairyland as this big sea, and the tide is sometimes out. — Brian Froud

Anytime that is 'betwixt and between' or transitional is the faeries' favorite time. They inhabit transitional spaces: the bottom of the garden, existing in a space between manmade cultivation and wilderness. Look for them in the space between nurture and nature, they are to be found at all boarders and boundaries, or on the edges of water where it is neither land nor lake, neither path nor pond. They come when we are half-asleep. They come at moments when we least expect them; when our rational mind balances with the fluid irrational. — Brian Froud

The sylph is a fragment of the earth's soul in faery form. — Brian Froud

I'm so involved in the process that sometimes at the end of a day, I can look at the piece on my desk and really wonder how it got there. At other times, I really have to struggle with a piece to turn it into what I had in mind. Sometimes, I give up and leave it half finished to work on something else. Then in a few days, when I come back to it, I can see what it wants to be ... which sometimes is not at all what I had in mind. When I just let that happen, things seem to go more smoothly. — Wendy Froud

If you like my renditions of faerie-folk, then you will most certainly like Brian Froud's work. — Tony DiTerlizzi

People need to believe in more than what they see in everyday life. Somewhere inside, we all know that there is more out there than we experience normally. A belief in the other world can help explain why things happen to us. It can give us hope. I feel that we all hope we never get to be too old to fly to Never-Never Land or go through a wardrobe into Narnia. We want to think that there is something looking back at us when we look at the stars. We want to think that just around the bend in the forest, we'll find fairies dancing in a ring. I hope that my work affirms those beliefs," she continues. "I want people to think of my work as a key to that other world. — Wendy Froud

I've been actively engaged with mythic imagery ever since I picked up that Rackham book, but it really came into focus for me when I moved from London to the country. As I walked the extraordinary landscape of Dartmoor, I looked at the trees and the rocks and the hills and I could see the personality in those forms ... then they metamorphosed under my pencil into faeries, goblins and trolls. After Alan and I published "Faeries", he moved on from the subject of faery folklore to illustrate Tolkien and other literary works ... while I discovered that my own exploration of Faerieland had only just begun. In the countryside, the old stories seemed to come alive around me; the faeries were a tangible aspect of the landscape, pulses of spirit, emotion, and light. They "insisted" on taking form under my pencil, emerging on the page before me cloaked in archetypal shapes drawn from nature and myth. I'd attracted their attention, you see, and they hadn't finished with me yet. — Brian Froud

To me, intolerance leads down a dreadful path that the world sometimes seems to be going to. — Brian Froud

Once you step onto the fairy path, it's almost like there's no way off. You have to keep going. — Brian Froud

A lot of excellent illustrators are working at the moment
especially in fantasy and children's books. It is exciting also to see graphic artists such as Dave McKean, in his film Mirrormask, moving between different media. I also greatly admire the more traditional work of Gennady Spirin and Roberto Innocenti. Kinuko Craft, John Jude Palencar, John Howe, Charles Vess, Brian Froud ... I'll stop there, as the list would get too long. But
in a fit of pride and justified nepotism
I'll add my daughter, Virginia Lee, to the list. Her first illustrated children's book, The Frog Bride [coming out in the U.K. in September, 2007], will be lovely. — Alan Lee

In college, I became interested in folk tales and fairy tales. Gradually I became more and more interested in the underlying meaning of it all and the possibility of the reality of real fairies. — Brian Froud

In the 20th century, artists did a great disservice to fairies. They painted fairies in a way that was shallow and trite. So when people see my stuff, they suddenly realize the depth of fairies. — Brian Froud

My art's not safe, I don't want it to be safe, it's not meant to be safe, its controversial, it takes you into deep areas, it's a journey, its starts off in safe areas but it gets into deep waters. — Brian Froud

Perhaps all women are part faerie, for what woman can deny her faerie blood when the portals to her own land are open; when the full moon sings its insistent song; when sorrow and passion and rage pulse through her body at moon times. This is why women are the chosen ones of Faerie, pat of the vibrant, fluid, emotional soul of the world ... — Brian Froud

Faeries are not fantasy, but a connection to reality. Faeries are irrational, poetic, absurd, and very, very wise. Faeries say there is nonsense in dogma, and sense in nonsense. Faeries express themselves with high seriousness and low humour. Faeries are resistant to all definitions. — Brian Froud

Nobody wanted to publish a book about fairies; they said people wouldn't be interested. Luckily, I discovered Lady Cottington and her pressed fairies, which revived a huge amount of interest in fairies, so I could go ahead and do the book I wanted to do. — Brian Froud

It seems to me that art has lost its connection to spirit. — Brian Froud

I live in a house that's incredibly old, and it's typical that part of it is slightly in the ground. It's very earthed. It's almost like living in a hobbit house. — Brian Froud

It was ironic that there I was finally painting the pictures I'd always wanted to paint and feeling very much at home in the countryside, and I ended up working in New York City, which is definitely the archetypal city. — Brian Froud

Remember, as each man and woman is a microcosm reflecting the larger natural world, so healing of the self is also a healing for the world. As above, so below. — Brian Froud

Not all meanings are meant to be clear at once. Some ideas take time. Some words are designed to lead us on inner journeys, with truth hidden deep inside them. — Brian Froud

I paint the spirit and soul of what I see. — Brian Froud

To believe in faeries is to step into an enchanted space where the rational mind meets the irrational heart, and all things become possible. — Brian Froud

I went and studied graphic design, because it seemed to me that advertising is more honest - the image actually has a function. But once I started on that, I realized that was really boring. — Brian Froud

I suppose I was artistic as a child. Our house was so full of art and artists that it never occurred to me not to be constantly making things. I just assumed that all kids liked to work with their hands as much as I did. I was an only child so I did have a lot of time to be creative by myself and with my parents. — Wendy Froud

I like to think of the figures I make as companions for a personal journey. I try to fill each one with healing energy that responds to the person who owns it, and conversely, I hope that the person who owns it will respond with a true heart connection. I feel that my work is a sign post to the half forgotten world that we all carry inside of us. When people look at my work, I want them to think "Oh, now I remember." If they do that then I know that they have been successful. — Wendy Froud

It was hard for me to move forward, because I take responsibility for what I introduce into the world through my paintings. So to actually introduce something evil or bad was quite hard for me. — Brian Froud

Spirits were seen to be very much part of the everyday world, and you were accosted by spirits all the time. It's only really quite recently that we've relegated the fantastic as being just imagination and not real and having no purpose. — Brian Froud

Magic and disbelief are like magnets repelling. — Riley J. Froud

My mother used to read to me every night when I was little. We got through most of the major fantasy books of that time. The Narnia books by C.S. Lewis were my favorites and, later, Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. I started making dolls to fill in the gaps of the dolls I had. Obviously we couldn't buy centaurs and fauns and elves and fairies, so I made them to play with the normal dolls I had. I must have been about six years old when I started making fantasy dolls. — Wendy Froud

Faeries are seen through the heart, not through the eyes. Remember that faeries inhabit the interior of the earth and the interior of all things, so look, in the first place, in the interior of yourself. — Brian Froud

You do not see fairies through the eyes, you see them through the heart and that took me a long time to learn because I was always trying to see them through my eyes. — Brian Froud

Part of what I feel is that the so-called bad fairies are really only there to get you to pay some attention. They trick you up until you're lying flat on your back and you literally have another point of view. They're about loosening up being rigid. They trip you over to break the barrier between you and the world. So their so-called "badness" actually can be quite instrumental in helping you with things. — Brian Froud

I have a great interest in classical mythology and I need to make a sphinx or satyr every once in awhile to satisfy those interests. ( ... ) — Wendy Froud

For me drawing is an attempt to understand what I feel about the world I live in. — Brian Froud

Naming a fairy is notoriously difficult, because they don't particularly like to be named. There are so many of them, and humans have always wanted to categorize them. In that way, we think we can have more control over them. — Brian Froud

We almost need another word for fairy, that's the thing. Once people get to see what fairies' real power is, then they understand. — Brian Froud

Art always used to involve spirit. Painters painted spirit. They painted by commission things to go into churches, and that was painting spirit. Or they would paint people of wealth, and they would try to show how they had power, and again, this is sort of spirit. — Brian Froud

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. — Brian Froud

At the edge of our world, at the edge of the otherworld, the beautiful and mysterious faeries stand, watching and waiting to greet us, inviting us to journey with them as our guides while we walk the infinite paths of the Faerie. — Brian Froud