Phantasmagorey

I was pleased to be asked to contribute an image to a show celebrating Edward Gorey's work. However, I immediately realised I didn't actually know very much about his work. It was a fun challenge to find something about him that I could connect with and be inspired by.

The work that came out of this research is Pen Names.

It is a bit of an awkward format for viewing on a phone (the drawing measures about 15x50cm). Perhaps this is one to see in person: the show opened last night in Edinburgh - if you happen to be a local, find the details in the image below:

Pen Names is inspired by Edward Gorey’s propensity for inventing and publishing under a number of pseudonyms throughout his career - for example Ogdred Weary and Eduard Blutig (a German play on words). This immediately appealed to me (if you're a reader of this newsletter you may have noticed that I am fond of etymology and wordplay!). Blessed with a name containing a suitable blend of consonants and vowels I set out to create some anagrams of my name.

When I started, I didn’t really know where it would lead me.

I also did some research into alternative versions of my name - this was a pretty interesting thing to do because I'd never really looked into the origin of Lesley. There's a connection to the Hungarian László, as well as the Old Gaelic leas celyn (anglicised Lecelin or Lesslelyn) meaning holly garden. That one is a fateful coincidence, seeing how my last name, Imgart, likely means in the garden. Garden in the garden! I went along with this theme and found some other translations of "garden" or "in the garden" to create further names.

It seemed like an obvious choice to have all these characters lined up in a row - not stiff, like in a class photo, but ideally interacting in some way. I went through several iterations. I also tried to increase the absurdity going from left to right - so, it's me at the beginning and it ends with a smelly tiger. After I'd sketched out some ideas, I took reference photos - Sarah patiently recreated every single one of these poses. However, I posed for the legs (because the shoes are mine!).

I traced the messy pencil sketch - ended up with a clean-ish pencil sketch (the image above), in the correct dimensions for my final drawing. I then traced this using my trusty lightbox onto a new sheet of paper, trying very hard not to mess it up - I really did not want to start over again!

If you look closely at some details (the T-shirt and the newspaper) you'll see I've included even more anagrams there.

Overall, I had a lot of fun doing this - it was not my usual thing to do!

Can you make any good anagrams out of your name? Do let me know.

Leg rats,

L x