A Tribute to Mabinogion Illustrator, Margaret Jones
A couple of weeks ago I drove west to the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth to an event to celebrate the life and work of an artist who has had a massive impact on me and many other storytellers who tell the stories of the Mabinogion. The artist in question is Margaret Jones and I was so pleased that, just a few months short of her hundred and first birthday, she was there to be honoured by fans, fellow creatives and the curious.
Cai and Bedwyr on the Salmon’s back
We packed out the Drwm in the National Library of Wales. It is a small and companionable space which seats about a hundred or so and is specifically designed with the listener in mind (unlike so many other spaces I could grumpily mention). The storyteller and illustrator Peter Stevenson presented the tribute to Margaret and her work, some of which could be seen on the stage. In fact there was so much of her work on display there was hardly room for Peter to move. He would occasionally disappear behind the pictures on display in search of an image he wanted to show us that had temporarily hidden itself under piles of stuff.
Peter gave us a brief outline of Margaret’s life, including her time in India and her marriage to a Welshman who brought her to Aberystwyth where she still lives. He contextualised Margaret’s work and placed her in the cannon of great illustrators who emerged when print technology allowed the cheap reproduction of full colour images. These included such names as Arthur Rackham, Tove Jansson, Maurice Sendak and Lotte Reiniger as well as contemporary Welsh illustrators and artists like Maria Hayes, Valeriane Leblond and Jac Jones.
You can find out more about Peter’s presentation from this facebook post and you can also see examples of work by these, and other artists, on this Pinterst board.
Illustrators have had a huge impact on how we see the world of the stories we read. The Dickensian London in my head is the one drawn by Hablot Knight Brown (aka Phiz). Norwegians tell me that the trolls of their imagination all look like they’ve been drawn by Erik Werenskiold or Theodor Kittelsen. Margaret Jones has had an equally strong impact on those of us who tell stories from the Mabinogion. She has a knack of being able to combine the medieval and prehistoric layers and weave in the lives of the characters with the magic that surrounds them. The natural world that impinges on and influences the stories is present in almost all of her Mabinogion illustrations, even those that do not directly deal with action involving the natural world.
Branwen and the starling
Margaret’s work also drives home an obvious, but overlooked aspect of these, and many other orally-derived stories. The vast majority of the action happens outdoors, compared to the way we live our lives today. If people are indoors in the Mabinogion it is usually for some kind of ritual, usually involving eating and drinking.
When storytellers get together we can talk about things that leave other people bemused because of our common obsession and practice. And, of course, it is the same for illustrators. In his presentation Peter showed us how the community of contemporary and past illustrators influence, provoke and support one another through their work and conversations, just like we do.
One of the really inspiring things about Margaret Jones’ career is that, although she had been honing her craft since childhood, she didn’t start illustrating professionally until she was in her sixties. I am a great believer in the slow creative burn and some of my most satisfying projects have been years in the making. So, in this age of frantic attention getting, it is great to see an artist who was able to wait for the right moment before letting her work take its place in the world.
When I tell stories from the Mabinogion I open myself to all sorts of influences in order to bring the stories to life and Margaret’s images are always there in some form, rubbing up against my storytelling practice, parallel texts and the Welsh landscape. I am really grateful to have gone to this event, partly to find out more about someone who has influenced me and shake her hand, but also to see that we, as storytellers, have some very talented and committed artists working alongside us who we don’t get to hang out with as much as we should. Peter, as a creative with a foot in both camps, was able to bring those two sides together, as he did for the recent Aberystwyth Storytelling Festival in Amgueddfa Ceredigion Museum. If you are going to be in west Wales in the near future the festival exhibition is on until the 4th of January 2020 and well worth a visit.
The festival brought storytelling, music and visual art together on a Wales/Appalachia theme, which is a much stronger connection than you might think. Both the festival and the celebration of Margaret’s work in the National Library brought it home to me that we are connected to more people than we can imagine in our creative work and that a vital part of our work is to celebrate and remember those connections.
Or, in the words of the Welsh poet Waldo Willliams, we are invited to ‘cadw tŷ mewn cwmwl tystion’ (keep a house in a cloud of witnesses).
Arianrhod, Gwydion and Lleu