Amy Hale on Ithell Colquhoun
"This book will be the standard work on Colquhoun for years to
come. Amy Hale’s book marks a major step forward in this process of
increasing appreciation and understanding of her life and work." - Richard
Shillitoe
To celebrate the general release through all good bookshops of the paperback
edition of Ithell Colquhoun: Genius Of The Fern Loved Gully, head over
to Youtube for an introduction and reading by author Amy Hale.
You Can Watch The Full Video Here
A handful of hardback special editions of the book are still available directly through our web shop, click here to order a copy now.
Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of The Fern Loved Gulley
by Amy Hale
304pp, 160mm x 240mm
Heavily illustrated in colour.
HB (400 copies) £30 / PB £20
ISBN: 9781907222863
Available Now
‘At 10 Years Old I Imagined Christ As A Hermaphrodite… I Fused The Red Hearted Jesus With The Blue Cloaked Mary And Made A God With Breasts.’
After decades of neglect, the British Surrealist and occultist Ithell
Colquhoun’s unique vision and hermetic life have generated enormous
interest amongst historians and practitioners of art and magic. In this, the
first in-depth biographical study of Colquhoun and her work, Amy Hale examines
the magical and cultural confluences that shaped her imaginative life and
artistic vision.
Rejecting the hectic social expectations and magical orthodoxies of
London’s art and occult scenes, Colquhoun retreated to Cornwall, where, at
the price of relative cultural obscurity, she pursued a life of profoundly
dedicated spiritual and artistic enquiry. As a result, her visual and written
works have only recently begun to receive the recognition they deserve as daring
experiments in magical art, autobiography and esoteric feminism.
As the influential role of occult ideas in the history of art becomes ever clearer, Colquhoun’s work is long overdue a fresh consideration. ‘Genius of the Fern Loved Gully’ balances engaging biography with historical erudition and critical insight into her art and writing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr Amy Hale is a Folklorist and Anthropologist specialising in modern Cornwall and contemporary esoteric history and culture. She has published widely on topics such as modern Druidry, Cornish ethnonationalism, Arthurian lore, colour theory, occult aesthetics, and extremist politics in modern Paganism.
She resides in Atlanta with her family, five cats, and a 250-year-old oak tree.