11 Rowena Morrill (1944-2021)

 

Rowena Morrill was one of the first women artists in America to make a career illustrating paperback books and to have had a major impact on the industry. She had three monograph books of her work: Imagine, The Art of Rowena, and The Fantastic Art of Rowena. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Tomorrow, Beyond, and Infinite Worlds, as well as in magazines like Print Magazine, Art Scene Int., Heavy Metal, and Play Boy. Rowena was nominated four times for a Hugo Award, for best artist, and she won the British Fantasy Award in 1984. And, she won a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2020 World Fantasy Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Rowena was born in Mississippi. She earned her BA from the U. of Delaware. She then studied further at the Tyler School of Arts in Philadelphia. She left that program early to start illustrating for a NYC advertising agency, and then painted her first cover for Ace Books. Her first cover for a horror was Jane Parkhurst's Isobel in 1977. She went on to illustrate anthologies of H.P. Lovecraft, as well as covers for Isaac Asimov, Madeleine L'Engle, Anne McCaffrey, Philip Dick, Sam Delaney, Theodore Sturgeon, and Piers Anthony.

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'The Divine Invasion'

Portrait of Sci-Fi Author Isaac Asimov

Portrait of Sci-Fi Author Isaac Asimov

'Night Walk'

'Dragon Drums'

'Dragon Singer'

'Dragon Holder', a portrait of Anne McCaffrey

'Garden of Stone'

'The Imps from Under the Rocks'

'Beren & Luthien'

'The Unknown Five'