Max Ginsburg is a social realist painter who, since entering the art world in the 1960s, has been widely acclaimed for his paintings of New York City street life. Starting in 1980, he supplemented his income through commercial illustration. Up until his retirement from the commercial field in 2004, Ginsburg painted covers for over 800 titles. A small sampling of both his commercial work and his fine art can be found below.
Aleta Rafton is an award-winning book cover artist, who has illustrated hundreds of books in the fantasy and romance genre. More of her work can be seen here.
Jon Paul is one of the most renowned artist/photographers in the Romance Novel Cover Art industry. The covers of Jon Paul appear regularly on books issued by the leading romance novel publishing houses. I know that I’ve got more than few of them sitting in my bedroom. More of Paul’s work can be seen at his site.
Raymond Pease was a painter and an illustrator. Born in Vermont, Pease attended Grand Central Art School and the National Academy of Design in New York City, and received a B.F.A. degree from the Yale University School of Art. He also studied art in Paris at the Ecoles des Beaux-Arts and Academie Julian. Along with painting portraits, still lifes, and portraits of horses, Pease did illustrations for magazines and book covers for Signet and Pocket Books. Pease lived the latter years of his life in Arizona.
A sampling of his work can be found below.
J.K. Potter is one of the most renowned artists working in the fantasy and horror field but there doesn’t seem to be much personal information available. Even his website, JKPotter.com, is lacking in the biographical details that one would normally expect to find. Fortunately, his images speak for themselves.
Born in Oakland, California, Raymond Bayless was a self-taught artist who, by the end of his career, had his still-life paintings hanging in the National Air and Space Museum, the State Department, and the Pentagon. He is best known for his fantasy and horror-themed illustrations, many of which writings of H.P. Lovecraft. Bayless also wrote several books on parapsychology.
Les Edwards is a British artist who has provided horror-related illustrations for a countless number of a book covers, magazines, album covers, and games. Edwards studied at the Hornsby College of Art. He has won the British Fantasy Society award for Best Artist seven times and won the World Fantasy Award in 2008.
Virgil Finlay is considered to be one of the best artists to work in pulp magazines. From the his first publication in 1935 until his death in 1971, Finlay created more than 2600 works of graphic art. He was acclaimed for the amount of detail that he put into his illustrations.
A small sampling his work can be found below. Click on each picture to enlarge.
Judson Huss was born in North Carolina. After studying art at several different design schools, Huss grew dissatisfied with the “modernist” approach of most American instructors and moved to Europe. Huss lived and worked in Paris. His paintings are in select private collections in France, the Netherlands, and America. After his death, much of his work was collected in the retrospective art book, River of Mirrors.
The husband-and-wife team Leo (1933 — 2013) and Diane (1933– ) Dillon met while training at Parsons School of Design and married shortly after graduating in 1956. Over the course of 50 years, they collaborated on over 100 magazine and book covers. Among numerous awards, the Dillons won the Caldecott Medal in both 1976 and 1977, the only time that the award has been won consecutively.
Through the Shattered Lens 