People Who Rock: Brigid Ashwood

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the people I love. The people who’ve helped me through tough times, have inspired me creatively, and become friends and cohorts and partners in crime. Most of them have been discovered through this web of wonder, and I see them rarely (if ever). So I thought it might be fun to share with you some of the people I know who rock.

I think we as writers and creatives spend so much talking about ourselves (especially on these platform-building blogs) that it’s important to take a second and recognize those around us who’ve contributed to our success.

The first that comes to mind when I think “inspiration” is a woman I met about five years ago through our mutual love of steampunk. She’d heard my podcast, I’d seen her art. I interviewed her. We clicked. We’ve been fast friends ever since, and share a certain sarcastic yet romantic personality (Severus Snape meets Elizabeth Bennett, perhaps). And we also love steampunk, yet take it all with a grain of salt. It’s important to have perspective. Not to mention, we share a mutual obsession with fonts (good and bad) and both get excited about arty words like filigree and millefiori.

When I first saw her artwork, I was bowled over. I was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Now, I’m not an artist. But I like to imagine that if I’d truly fostered my talent and given as much effort as Brigid has, that what I’d make (if I actually had the skills) would look something like what she does. It’s elegance meets artifice (in a good way–mechanical beauties, strange contraptions with doll faces) all saturated with a depth of color and texture that just make me giddy. There were quite a few pages of Pilgrim of the Sky that were inspired by Brigid’s work, and when she agreed to do the work on the cover of the book, it made my year. We’d worked together on a poetry and art piece for Weird Tales, which was a joy, so it was easy as pie.

Brigid is one of the hardest working artists I know out there who, in spite of the everyday challenges (we’ve both gone through layoffs in our family recently) manages to consistently amaze me with her output. She’s also a Renaissance woman, who has many facets–not just visually artistic (and not just painting pretty pictures: she’s done everything from Tarot decks to runes to tongue-in-cheek designs!), but literary as well. She absolutely killed NaNoWriMo last year! I’m really looking forward to what she does as an author.

Which is all to say that Brigid is one of the people who’s a pillar of my online community: A friend, a compatriot, and a fellow mischief-maker. I have yet to meet her in person, but the weird thing is… I feel like I have already. I count her among my dearest (and one of the best phone conversationalists I’ve ever met–seriously, we can talk for hours!).

So if you have a sec, please check out her work, her website, and her store. Follow her on Twitter, too!