The artist Ed Kluz has a fascination for the sites of lost buildings. Once-celebrated grand houses that were abandoned to ruin, burned or deliberately destroyed have now become the haunting subject matter of his distinctive collages. His highly original works are a combination of watercolour and layer upon layer of delicate painted collage elements, the tension between colour and texture achieving a sense of depth and light. Kluz's lost houses conjure up the vanished buildings in all their pomp, existing not in the re-created landscape, but rather illuminated by theatrical lighting. In his introduction to the book, the art and architectural historian Tim Knox describes Kluz's views of houses, with their concentration on the filigree architecture and silhouette of building itself, as heirs to the highly finished perspective drawings produced by architectural artists in centuries past; he also draws parallels with the bold graphic tradition of Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden. Among the English houses featured in depth are the Tudor palace of Holdenby House, the magnificent mansion of Hamstead Marshall, Vanbrugh's Claremont, and the grandiosely Gothic Fonthill Abbey. Each house is introduced by the architectural historian Olivia Horsfall Turner, who details its history and fate. AUTHOR: Ed Kluz is an artist, illustrator and printmaker whose work reimagines historic landscapes, buildings and objects. His approach to image-making is inspired by his interest in English Romanticism, the Picturesque movement and antiquarian representations of architecture and topography. He has received commissions from, among others, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and such publishers as Faber, the Folio Society and John Murray. He grew up in North Yorkshire, studied fine art at Winchester School of Art and now lives in East Sussex. SELLING POINTS: ? The first book devoted to the popular artist, illustrator and printmaker Ed Kluz, presenting an extensive selection of his striking collages of lost country houses, and other prints and sketches ?With engaging contributions from the architectural historians Tim Knox and Olivia Horsfall Turner ?Kluz is one of the St Jude's group of artists, representing the very best in British printmaking 200 colour illustrations
