Featured Artist for this issue:

                       Pam Marin-Kingsley

Pam Marin-Kingsley is a writer, artist and web designer (www.far-angel.com) who lives in Haverhill, MA.  She works in both traditional and digital media. Most of the work featured in this issue of  Dream Towne was done in a combination of Adobe PhotoShop, Adobe Illustrator, and Corel Painter 6.

        Fantastic images and literature have always inspired me. In middle school and high school I was always the weird chick reading SF or Fantasy novels. I also exhausted the library with regard to folklore and fairy tale books. Before I was 10 I had read the kid's version of Homer's Odyssey at least 10 times. Ray Harryhausen movies (Sinbad, Jason and Argonauts) were among the first things I can remember seeing. So my involvements with the genre as reader and artist have been life long.

        

        When you realize you have an artistic spark, the first thing you turn to is what you love. So what I draw and paint is an extension of this love affair with the written word and, in turn, translating that into things that other people can see. I still consider myself a student. I am still taking classes and will probably always be studying. Art is what I call a "bottomless career" - there is always something new to learn and these days, some new technology that enhances it. I came into this profession late--after working in corporate America for nearly 20 years. The bottom line is that if you finally don't do what you love, you will implode and lose part of your soul in the process. I didn't desire that fate and decided I should probably try doing something I loved and see what happened.

        

        Illustrating this issue of Dream Towne and doing the website design has been both challenging and engrossing (and one heck of a lot of work). I learned a lot from it and it has been really a lot of fun reading other people's work and, in turn, working with them on trying to try and translate "literary vision" into a literal work of art.

        My pet peeve as an artist is people who still frown on digital media and have a bias against people who use it.  The computer is just a tool like a paintbrush, palette knife or pencil , it just allows the artist to try things more quickly and cleanly than traditional media.

To see larger version of these images, click on the links below. Note these images along with the artist's commentary will appear in separate windows.  Because these images are of a higher resolution than featured elsewhere on this site, they may take a bit longer to load— depending on the speed of your internet connection.  

Essex Writers' & Artists' Guild

Far-Angel Design