Ever curious who’s behind the image of a Bacchic brown bear sitting atop a beer barrel in a slobbery rage? Or a little Victorian girl in her 19th century home, cradling a ravenous beast twice her size? Meet Omar Rayyan: a West Tisbury guy with an artistic knack for capturing the spirit of past centuries.
“When I was in school, I was very much into the artists of the Victorian period, where you had a lot of pen and ink work,” Mr. Rayyan said in an interview with The Times. “Everything was drawing-based, with a line quality I found very appealing.”
His style took shape at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he delved into the works of early 20th century artists like Arthur Rackham, Maxfield Parrish, and Edmund Dulac. If you’ve never heard these names, just know they’re big in the art-history biz. From there, Mr. Rayyan got sucked into the works of symbolist and romantic painters to the point of no return — so he made his way backward.
“I slid into the Northern Renaissance with van Dyck, Rembrandt, and Rubens. They all have a strong sense of movement and storytelling,” he said. “There was such an overexuberance of line and color, but with a beautifully balanced sophistication that you don’t come across in this day and age.”
Thanks to Mr. Rayyan, we sort of do. He strategically divides his time between commercial illustrations and personal projects. Most of his commercial work consists of books and children’s magazines, but he was also a concept illustrator for the motion picture “Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”
“When you’re a commercial illustrator, you’re essentially fed projects, so your brush has to meet the needs and expectations of the publisher or marketplace,” he said. “That kind of work consumed me for a long time, and I needed a free-for-all.”
That’s when friend and fellow illustrator Ruth Sanderson pitched him the idea to create an art book for the 19th century poem “Goblin Market,” by Christina Rossetti. The idea came up about 10 years ago at a dinner party, and Mr. Rayyan agreed that it might be the perfect way to “flex [his] artistic muscles.”
“It’s a very heavily visual poem, with a lot of metaphor and symbolism in it. It offers a lot of stream-of-consciousness opportunity,” he said. “I essentially just read the poem and responded to it directly, passage by passage. I wasn’t concerned with what the end format would look like or what the size of the book was going to be. Two-thirds of the way through I realized I had to start thinking about pulling it together into something concrete.”
The 88-page art book contains over 100 illustrations, which Mr. Rayyan says can each take up to 10 days to complete, depending on size and detail. He said “Goblin Market” represents about four years worth of work, broken up by personal paintings and commercial illustrations.
Upon finishing “Goblin Market,” Mr. Rayyan wanted to see how well the book would do, so he tapped into today’s digital resources and launched a Kickstarter campaign in August. His goal was to reach $15,000 with preorder backers, and his supporters came in strong, quickly doubling that total.
“We’re in a day and age where we can self-publish. The Internet and Kickstarter are a beautiful way to get your thing out there and figure out if people actually want it,” Mr. Rayyan said. “Something like this would be nearly impossible in the old world of publishing.”
The campaign extends through Friday, Sept. 23, but Mr. Rayyan has already moved on. “I don’t think about my projects after they’re done. I painted it, and that’s it,” he said. “Now I’m working on another painting, and all I care about is hitting the bells and checked boxes of what I’m trying to make it do. And even while I’m doing that, I’m still thinking about the next one.”
The Kickstarter will run through September 23, 2016.