Year: 1980
Publisher: Dragon´s Dream
ISBN: 082569552X
Content: 80 pages with colour paintings
Ever since I got my hands on Roger Dean´s Magnetic Storm, I was after this artbook. Back in those late 80´s behind the Iron Curtain in Hungary, little was to be known about American comic culture, about the New York art community The Studio (about which another sought-after Dragon´s Dream artbook has been published almost simultaniously), and about Bernie Wrightson, Barry Windsor-Smith, Michael Kaluta and... Jeff Jones!
But in Magnetic Storm, Roger Dean collected most of the covers of his artbook publishing companies Dragon´s Dream, later Paper Tiger/Dragon´s World. And one of the covers jumped right through my eyes into my artoleptic brain and got stuck there forever: Jeff Jones with this beautiful, dreamy, classic aesthetica called Yesterday´s Lily.
The book was hard to find (and quite expensive), but worth every day of the 10 or so years of waiting and searching. Amazingly beautiful, classical art-like oil paintings of dreamy sceneries and its inhabitants; watercoloured orks and goblins, strange creatures, barbarians and even some "simple" landscapes - this book still amazes me, even after several other books by Jeffrey (now, after a gender transition, Catherine) Jones surfaced.
Frank Frazetta himself called Jones once the "greatest living artist"... and this softcover of paintings surely live up to these words. You can still find copies at Amazon for reasonable prices, although I also highly recommend Cathy and Arnie Fenners recollection from Underwood Books in 2002. Finally, some of Jeffrey Jones´ art can be found on the official homepage.
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