Reviews

“I’ve been a fan of Katherine Soutar Caddick for most of my life, so I knew this would be book a treasure and I wasn’t disappointed.

I love the premise of this book.  We are used to an illustrator responding to written work – here the starting point is reversed.  The creatures exquisitely rendered by Katherine are the inspiration for storytellers and authors.  Katherine’s creatures capture perfect moments, the authors let them move, stretch out, give them life and a story.

The stories come from a wide variety of authors – from vibrant new voices to storytellers with decades of experience.  The stories layer to create a diverse tapestry woven together by the continuous threads of Katherine’s distinctive detailed style and an all-pervading sense of wonder. 

It is a book of mood pictures and moon dreams, moments of magic that have slipped through from the Otherworld.  There are starlit sprinkled selkies dancing on pink sand; imps playing with pigeons while the Yeti looks out from the shadows between the fires.

This book was born in isolation and uncertainty, in a time when the world stopped.  It grew in a rare communal moment of quiet contemplation and re-evaluation.  It encapsulates the feelings of that time – anxiety, appreciation of the world around us and the importance of community and human contact.  The pages of this book are filled with mystical creatures, but it is quintessentially about what it is to be human. 

This is a book of wistful beauty, melancholy magic and yearning, bound together with golden threads of hope

 

And when they asked me why I wept

Like one who for his dead love mourns

The only answer I could give

I dreamed that there were unicorns”

Amy Douglas, Storyteller and Author

“This is a really special collection of fascinating mythology, bound together by the wonderfully rich and bewitching illustrations of Katherine Soutar. Haunting, dream-like, half in shadow, yet beautifully lit, they somehow capture all the mystery and magic of these timeless tales”.

James Mayhew, Author & Illustrator

“I’ve always loved Katherine Soutar’s art, and this collection of stories inspired by her luminous work is utterly enchanting. Weaving word and image to bring folklore to life, Myths in Isolation touches the soul and creates true magic.” 

Terri Windling, Author, editor and Artist

A bit of background…

I was close to panic at the beginning of the stay at home period of the Covid crisis. After a couple of weeks of confusion about risk and anxiety about friends and family I knew were very vulnerable, I was exhausted and stressed. 

I managed to focus on work long enough to finish the book cover I was working on and send it off. I had another book cover and some colour spreads in my inbox but my publisher then emailed to say they were closed for now and my editor would be on furlough so there was now no idea when anything would go to print or be signed off/approved

For a few days I tidied cupboards, repotted plants and planted vegetable seeds to try to ground myself. It helped. I tried sporadically to work on my commissions, these things I now had no deadline for… but without much success.

I felt frustrated and disconnected. I wasn’t drawing. It hurt, I could feel panic creeping back, and it made me feel rudderless.

Then I remembered my friend Su had created a drawing challenge at the beginning of February called ‘ A fortnight of fuckdoodlery’ for those of us who were feeling low and discouraged about all sorts of things. I messaged her and asked if she would consider setting up another to give us all something to focus on other than our current scary situation. 

She very kindly obliged and made it an alphabetical challenge for the sake of simplicity. It was immediately a lifesaver for me. Creating for the sake of it helped me pick up a pencil again. I looked forward to curling up in a chair every day and finding something beginning with A to F

I decided to only use pastels and pencils as this was all about drawing rather than painting. Some were simple, some silly, some were from life, some were heartfelt. It gave me a chance to try to draw my Dad once more and be reminded of our last trip to Barcelona together. 

When I got to the Letter G I instantly thought Griffin!  I need to draw a griffin… and as I started to draw him I realised he was expressing something about what I was feeling that day about this unsettling time, this strange bright spring shot through with darkness. I joked to my son that perhaps I should do a series of mythical creatures in self isolation. He raised his eyebrows in that ‘well? Sort of way he has, so the idea was born. 

These drawings rapidly became a daily obsession, after doing the first few curled up in an armchair I found I was taking longer and longer over them and so finding this more and more problematic. I struggled to unfold myself afterwards my limbs grumped and groaned and the eye strain of working in the dim living room lighting started to show. I don’t know why I resisted returning to my desk to do these for so long, some strange sense of guilt that it wasn’t ‘proper’ work somehow? I am not sure. But by the time I got to R I was back at my desk. 

Each day I posted the new drawing to social media and the responses were  encouraging, affirming and sometimes poignant. 

This also helped me more than I can say. Images are my main way of connecting with people, I can say more with them than with words.

Then people started to suggest there might be a book in these pictures at some point. Maybe, I thought…maybe. Finally my friend Tom, who is a wonderful storyteller from Orkney added that perhaps people could write stories to go with the images and as I imagined giving all these isolated creatures a different voice it seemed it could be something lasting and positive to come out of these times. 

This idea grew into this book, with its contributions from 16 different writers and storytellers, people who saw a story in my images and made it real, an odd reversal of the usual process I go through 

These images are of themselves and of the time of aloneness but also very much of me. They express so much about how I felt on that day. Some are unfinished, some polished. Some are dark and brooding, some thoughtful, some hopeful, even celebratory, some sad.

Now, nearly 5 years later, I will soon finally hold a printed copy of this book in my hands. it feels like a dream has come to pass and I am so happy to be able to present this collection of stories inspired by illustrations, which in turn were inspired by this strange and liminal time

List of contributing writers

Askafroa – Cara Viola

Brownie; Rainbow Crow – Louise Norgate

Centaur – April Madden

Dragon; Jackalope – Janet Dowling

Erlkönig; Hippocamp; Imp; Kelpie; Phoenix; Questing Beast; Zlatorog – Jane Stemp

Fei Lian’s Wings – Liu Hong Cannon

Griffin – Fiona Angwin

Laume’s Lament – Georgë Kear

Melusine – Maria Gillen

Nekomata ~ Counting the Cat Tails – Nimue Brown

Otso and the Silver Child; Tiangou ~ the Story of Chang Er – Suzi Clark

The Selkie and the Moon – Tom Muir

Unicorns – Bill Caddick

Vampire – Louise Gabriel

Wretch – Peter Stuart Lakanen

Xochiquetzal – Ursula Jeffries

Yeti – Simon Heywood

I will be sending out pre orders in the first week of January after the publication date

All copies are signed (and dedicated if required) and the first 50 ordered will come with a small surprise gift too x

To order you can Paypal £23.50 to ksoutarillustrator@gmail.com or contact me to arrange another payment method (either way please email me your mailing address, I can’t figure out how to get it to input on here!)

If you want to order from overseas please go direct to my publishers website below as I am personally unable to ship to other countries but they can!

https://shop.orkneyology.com/products/myths-in-isolation