© Darrell K. Sweet
I was saddened to hear that
Darrell K. Sweet passed away yesterday. As I have done from time to time, when a particularly influential illustrator dies, I like to sit and reflect on their work and how it moved me.
I spoke a little about Darrell's work
a year ago, when I had the pleasure of seeing something of a retrospective show of his at the World Fantasy Convention, and also purchased a small color study acrylic painting. I am of course doubly glad I bought that piece, and only wish I could've picked up more of these studies when I had my two chances. The first was at SiliCon in San Jose in the 90s sometime. I'm also very glad I got to hear Darrell's career-retrospective talk
last year, in which he went through a slideshow of artwork and discussed
aspects of his long career. For some reason, though I had opportunities to meet him twice, I didn't ever introduce myself.
Despite having done something like 3,000 illustrations over the course of his long career (a number I'm not likely to meet if I live to 77, at my current pace), it was always amazing to me that he never won any of the three main professional awards for this genre (Hugo, World Fantasy, Chesley). Rather, Darrell's work was simply always just in the atmosphere, perhaps taken for granted a bit. I don't know if this ever bothered him, but one could only hope to live as long, have that kind of career, and in the end have even the amount of influence he exerted.
And though he didn't really spawn any followers that I'm aware of, as some superstars do, he certainly was influential. Most of the fantasy guys in my generation grew up with his covers. For me, that dates back to High School, when I first started really reading a lot of fantasy and science fiction. And though I read multiple books with covers by Sweet, it was his work on Piers Anthony's Xanth series that really got me interested in his work. I think I stopped reading about book 13 or so, but he managed to retain Xanth as a perennial gig up through today (book 35 just released). Darrell's work had a quality that even in the late 80's/early 90's felt...not dated...but more like from another era. More classic, somehow.
I've always felt a kinship between what he did and many of the late 19c. German Romantic school of painters. Perhaps it was the architecture, which was generally so solidly rooted in European medieval, something which has fallen out of favor these days, being increasingly replaced by European medieval + dark gothic, raised to the power of "badass." As well, his costuming retained that same historical flair, which by and large is frowned upon in many quarters of the industry now.
Beyond all that, Darrell was a fantastic landscape painter. I always got the feeling that Darrell could have gone many directions for a career, and found success in all of them. He could have easily focused on landscape work. He could have turned to wildlife art (which he did do some pieces in), or western / native american (also worked in). He could have done a lot of things, but he spent the bulk of his career in fantasy and science fiction. In so doing, he helped shape a lot of today's illustrators. He also inspired me quite a lot, and for that I'm very thankful.
