This Folio Life: Eileen Cooper on illustrating Angela Carter

A great deal of thought goes into choosing the artist or illustrator we would like to work with on a Folio edition and we were incredibly pleased when Eileen Cooper agreed to illustrate Angela Carter’s seminal Nights at the Circus.

‘I describe the method I used as “print based collage”,’ says Eileen, ‘everything being hand drawn, then cut in the lino block, printed; later the prints themselves cut again and assembled. Perhaps best described as a hybrid form of artwork. Sometimes drawing or watercolour were added as the individual collages took shape.

‘I had put aside time in Summer 2019, when I had the use of a studio in France to make the bulk of the illustrations. As well as the flat sheets of colour, I also took with me drawing materials, glue, scissors, and a basic printmaking kit, including Japanese papers, lino blocks, inks and my lino cutting tools. I always work intensively when I’m interested in a new project.

Eileen Cooper didn’t stop when the commission was complete. Drawing on the subject matter, and the parallel themes of the female form and female identity that are at the heart of so much of her own work, Cooper continued to create artworks inspired by Nights at the Circus.