Justin Gerad, born in Georgia, specialized in illustrations at a very young age. He has an impressive repertoire of work seeing he used to make high quality artwork for movies and video games. With his wife Annie Stegg he then opened up his own gallery in November 2013, which exhibits both of their work. They mostly get inspired by authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Old mythologies, folklore and nature are also popular models for them. Exactly the work of J.R.R. Tolkien brought me to the artist in the face place. The artwork expresses a lot of nostalgia and reminds us of the golden age of illustrations and fantasy. Gerard knows exactly how to illustrate the pieces without losing his own style. The pieces express perfectly what I felt as a child whilst reading the stories by Tolkien and that right there was exactly the intention of the artist. You see, after having seen “Lord of the rings” in the theatre, he disposed of the concepts he had and simply painted over the books by Tolkiens.
He took his pencil and brush and illustrated his mental world onto Tolkiens works like “the Hobbit” and the “Silmarillion” to immortalize the stories forever. The style here is almost comic-like but perfectly recreates the epic stories by Tolkien. The colors are light, almost soft.
Besides these illustrations, the artist also creates images of fictional fantasy worlds and other mythological constructions. So if you’re a fan of art, fantasy and literature, basically if you’re someone with naturally good taste then I’d definitely recommend you to check him out!
Copyright and Source: http://www.gallerygerard.com/
