Vibrance

Victoria Heine sends this bright, generous, bloom-filled cover. The poppy above the title is, in itself, reminiscent of a heart -- passionate and fragile -- and I'm taken with the vibrance of the tableau.

Anna's house itself was testament to the precious accidents of life. Dandelions and giant poppies spotted her long-fringed lawn, and at the borders, where there ought to have been hedges, there were bright piles of kumquats, dropped from the ripening trees.

A Simple Beacon

Artist James Thouborron shares this luminous piece, entitled The Lamp Post, rendering a suburbia transformed by a simple beacon, a candle held up to the rather ecstatic natural world.

Outside, the oaks tossed their leaves behind their woody shoulders, the same way that women move their hair from front to back.  The old gas lamps cast aureoles of light onto the pavement, but directly in front of the de la Senda house, where the illumination stopped, the street turned into a broad thoroughfare of blackness and ideas where anything might happen.

The Intricacies of Love

We are delighted to receive this striking illustration from Jessica Rae Gordon of Toronto, Canada.  Anna's heart is here both interior and exterior, secret and revelation, sequestered and generous.  I can't help but be drawn to these contrasts.  

Ms. Gordon writes,

In my illustration I wanted to show the intricacies of love by showing the mechanics of a woman's heart and circulatory system.  Also, because the book has many descriptions of flowers, I put in the patterned wildflower drawings in the background.  With my line work, I wanted the drawings of the weeds to mirror the veins in the body.

Thank you for sending us this remarkable work, Ms. Gordon!

Waiting to Be Found

Thanks to Erika Haight for honoring me with her beautiful photograph and cover design, titled Sweet Thoughts of You.  The work evokes such a sense of hope, longing, expected renewal, all of which reside in Mariela's spirit.  Erika's words:

Dear Ms. von Herzen,

You have the most remarkable ability to express in words what it means to love and be loved by another.  I was especially taken by the tightly woven relationships that were formed between the women characters in your story. . . Since finishing your book I have purchased three additional copies and mailed them to people whom I have shared similar experiences with.  The image I have submitted for The Unfastened Heart is that of a young woman in quiet contemplation holding a flower. . .it could be any one of us who has ever loved, lost, or is still waiting to be found.

Art Inspires Art -- You are truly an inspiration!

Warm regards,

Erika N. Haight

The Language of the Heart

Jo-Ellen Trilling has painted this captivating work, Prayers from Earth.  I love her vision of the physical and meta-physical intertwining here, the prayers interweaving with the vermicelli, shaping the noodles into a script that we can, very nearly, read for ourselves.  She writes, 

I am compelled now and forever to check the vermicelli stuck to the bottom of my pots in case there is a message spelled out.

A joyful and poetic capturing of the book.  Thank you for honoring us with this work, Ms. Trilling!

A Magical Life

Paula Rae Gibson has captured the nature of Mariela here, in the exquisite vulnerability within this portrait.  She lives and breathes as part of a heightened world, in which the spirit is magnified, and hopes are writ large.   She wears a luminous halo above her head.

Mariela's was a magical life, replete with frank yearning and unearthly reverence, both collecting in the air about her like an aura.

Thank you, Ms. Gibson, for sharing this sensitive, captivating work with us.

The Face of Love

The Icon Prize is privileged to receive this transcendent portrait by artist Miguel Martinez of Taos, New Mexico.  (Mr. Martinez is represented by the Michael McCormick Gallery in Taos, for those of you who want to see more of his luminous work.) How remarkably this woman's gaze captures the wise spirit of Anna de la Senda, generous, serene, a witness to the beauty surrounding her.  Her eyes contain a reflection of that which is eternal and beloved.  I recognize her, though I've never met her outside of the fictional realm of The Unfastened Heart.  What a bright, shining gift!

Anna de la Senda lived for love.  Not her own, but other people's.  She took on counseling patients of all ages and attitudes, of all dilemmas and doubts, and she spoke with them in their living rooms about the health of their concealed hearts.  In return, they paid her with what they could, with cash or avocados, with money orders or cotton cloth.  The currency didn't matter to her.  What mattered was the healing of the brokenhearted.