Drawn to magical Dartmoor

CATHERINE COURTENAY talks mythic tales, trees and tango with Dartmoor’s Oscar-winning artist Alan Lee

- CATHERINE COURTENAY

Forty five years ago, the illustrator Alan Lee moved to Chagford from Stoke Newington. He and his then wife Marja had fallen in love with Dartmoor after visiting friends at Thornworthy for the weekend.

Alan vividly remembers his first encounter with the surrounding moorland.

“There was a beautiful river that runs alongside the house and lots of woods and I was just amazed at how lush it all was, the trees and moss-covered boulders, and I thought, ‘I’ve got to spend more time here. I’ve got to live here.’ And I talked to Marja and she felt the same.”

It was a transforming moment; they stayed an extra day, looked at some properties and by the end of the visit made an offer on a house which was accepted. Alan still lives in that house today.

He has two studios at the back of his home. One, the older studio, is crammed with art materials, books and cases filled with artwork. The other is spacious and light-filled, with views out on to his garden.

Bits of twisted wood lie around both studios. “They are so lovely to draw,” he says.

“Forests are my great love. So many of the stories I know and love are concerned with forests.”

Alan is best known for illustrating the works of JRR Tolkien, an association which began when he was commissioned to illustrate the 1992 centenary edition of The Lord of the Rings, published 100 years after Tolkien’s birth.

He later became a conceptual designer for The Lord of the Rings films. Director Peter Jackson had seen Alan’s illustrations and persuaded him to travel to New Zealand to work on the trilogy, a task that would take six years. He later returned for another six years for the making of The Hobbit films.