Creativity Friday: Interview with Lisa Hunt, Fairy Tale Tarot creator

I’m so pleased that internationally acclaimed tarot artist and author Lisa Hunt is my guest for today’s Creativity Friday! Lisa’s newest creation Fairy Tale Tarot has just been published by Llewellyn Worldwide to much critical praise.

Lisa and I have been friends for some years now — from before the publication of her first deck, The Shapeshifter Tarot. She’s one of the most prolific artists I know. We joke that tarot deck creators are the marathon runners of the illustration world — anyone who’s ever painted the 78 images needed for a deck understands how much work is involved. Using this analogy, Lisa is a triathlon champion: Besides The Fairy Tale Tarot, her many, many tarot decks include the bestselling Celtic Dragon Tarot and the award-winning Animals Divine Tarot. I don’t know how she does it all — and so beautifully too!

My interview with Lisa is all about The Fairy Tale Tarot, from inspiration to publication. On top of that, she’s offering a giveaway of The Fairy Tale Tarot set accompanied by a beautiful fine art print of Red Riding Hood. Info on how to enter the giveaway is at the end of this post.

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Kris Waldherr: What inspired you to create The Fairy Tale Tarot?

Lisa Hunt: I have always loved fairy tales. They were the first narratives I heard and they are comfort stories I carry with me. I don’t think a day goes by when I don’t think about fairy tales. I always wanted to explore these stories through written narrative and art, but I didn’t see the obvious until many years later. The big aha moment occurred one Friday while sipping margaritas under the light of a full moon. I was talking about my desire to paint and retell fairy tales when my brilliant hubby blurted out: “You should create a fairy tale deck!”. At that moment, the light bulb exceeded full wattage and I was ready to jump into this new adventure.

KW: The deck and book set look like an amazing amount of work! How long did it take for you to bring it to fruition? What did you find the easiest — and the most challenging — about creating this project?

LH: I started working on the project around 2004- early ‘05 and signed a contract (the easiest part of the project) with Llewellyn in the Spring of 2005. The most challenging part was the very beginning. It reminded me of my first grad school colloquium experience when all the expectations for earning a masters degree seemed absolutely insurmountable. I thought: “How will I ever get through this?” But once you get going, you do get through it and you actually start feeding on the very challenges that had seemed so daunting in the beginning. The Fairy Tale Tarot was the same way. I knew I had to write 78 stories with accompanying art within the somewhat limited format of a tarot deck. I mean, each story had to be self-sustaining using only one image and 2 or 3 pages of text. I sat there and thought “How will I ever get through this?”. But once I started, I was hooked all the way.

KW: The art for The Fairy Tale Tarot is unmistakably your style, which is so well known and loved within the tarot community. Yet it also reminds me a little of those wonderful English book illustration from the early twentieth century — Edmund Dulac, Arthur Rackham. Can you tell me a little about the evolution of the art for The Fairy Tale Tarot?

LH: Great question. My decision to adapt my work to reflect a golden age vintage feel was partially an attempt to mirror what I felt about these stories. I wanted the artwork to assume a sort of timeless quality to honor these lasting narratives. And to me illustrators like Rackham, Dulac, Beatrix Potter and even more contemporary fairy tale illustrators like the late Trina Schart Hyman and Lisbeth Zwerger (whose work I adore), had produced work that is proving to stand the test of time. The world is changing so quickly around us—and in ways that are mind boggling and downright stressful. It was my mission to create something that will also stand the test of time and serve as a potential source of comfort and introspection for many years to come

KW: Once Upon A Time, the book which accompanies the deck, is wonderfully written. I especially love the retellings which accompanies each of the 78 cards in the deck. They remind me of an old fashioned fairy tale book, such Andrew Lang’s The Blue Fairy Book. How did you go about matching the tales to the tarot cards? What considerations did you take in mind?

LH: Believe it or not, it was a relatively painless process. I spent an entire summer season reading fairy tale books. And as I read through entire collections including the complete set of Andrew Lang’s books, I instinctively put the puzzle pieces together. I pretty much identified potential stories for inclusion as I was reading along, with very few diversions from the original list. I supplemented the fiction with piles of scholastic support including Maria Von Frantz, Marina Warner, Maria Tatar, Jack Zipes, the inclusion of analytical psychology and the list goes on. Reading unlocked the ideas and by the time I accumulated a dozen note-filled journals, I knew what stories would best represent the card meanings (based on the Rider-Waite system). I will admit that I did get stuck on a few cards, but I simply put them away and revisited them when inspiration struck.

KW: One of my favorite retellings in Once Upon A Time is “Sealskin”, which accompanies the Queen of Cups. It’s about a shapeshifting female seal who is trapped into marriage when a man captures her sealskin; in this instance, the sea symbolizes the need for emotional freedom, for artistic self-expression. Though the seal wife eventually falls in love with her husband and the family they create, she cannot resist returning to the sea when the opportunity arises:

“She took the skin and embraced her offspring. She held them close for along while, smelling the essence of their earthy hair. As much as she ached for her children, she still had a seal heart — and it was pulling her toward the ocean…. She changed into a seal and dove into the waves.”

What I find especially bittersweet about this story is that the seal wife has to sacrifice one for the other — if she stays with her human family, she is denying her seal nature; if she returns to the sea, she has to leave her earth life behind. It’s the typical “can’t win for losing” scenario so many women face as we struggle to balance family responsibilities with personal development. What advice would you give other women struggling with this same conundrum?

LH: Wow Kris, you pretty much nailed it. There has been some resistance to this card—not necessarily in a negative sense, but because of the profound sadness of the tale’s outcome (leaving her human children behind). But on a symbolic level, it’s much more than that. I think it’s about a woman trying to maintain her own individual voice while addressing the needs of loved ones. I think a lot of women grapple with this including myself. We have an inner calling (the sea) to follow our desires, yet our nurturing natures keep us grounded by the shore, so to speak. I think the original telling was way ahead of its time!

But I honestly don’t think it’s good or wise to completely give up one for the other, despite the challenges of balancing both. If we ignore the needs of the soul, then we are denying ourselves a piece of who we are. And without an outlet to help appease those desires, what will become of all that energy? Like Sealskin, we may start languishing and grow deeply unhappy resulting in the very disharmony we were trying to avoid in the first place.

KW: On a related note, what is your favorite story and card in The Fairy Tale Tarot? Why?

LH: My favorite story that I had written (retold) was “The Little Match Girl” — oh, what an emotional tale full of gut wrenching turmoil. I cried the whole time I worked on it. Despite the sadness, writing it was magical and memorable.

It’s hard for me to choose favorite card paintings, but I love The Sorceress (The Lake Maiden) and all the mystery surrounding her. I think in some ways, I associate that card with the creation of the deck.

KW: You’ve created more tarot decks than any other artist I can think of. As such, you’ve been directly involved in the evolution of tarot. After working on so many decks, what do you consider the future of tarot?

LH: I started working on tarot decks 15 years ago and back then, it was still considered a taboo subject for some people. I did not publicly flaunt my way through Shapeshifter Tarot, but kept a very low key profile. That may sound strange, but at the time, there wasn’t the visibility or widespread acceptance (relatively speaking) that decks are now enjoying. And the internet had yet to really take off—which in some ways changed the entire tarot landscape. I feel tarot entered a renaissance around the new millennium followed by a subsequent boom. This resulted in an explosion of deck publications that continues to grow and captivate tarot enthusiasts from all over the world. I don’t know if I was part of the evolution, but I certainly feel lucky to somehow be part of an amazing era.

KW: Finally, do you have any advice for future tarot deck creators?

LH: Have a strong vision, be willing to dedicate years to the task and live and breathe the very deck you’re creating. I also feel strongly that a potential tarot deck creator should follow his/her own unique voice; and not attempt to emulate what has already been done.

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There are two ways to enter Lisa’s giveaway:

1. Leave a comment on her Fairy Tale Tarot blog here.

2. You can also enter on Twitter. The details are here.

Comments and tweets must be left by 11:59 September 18th. Winner will be announced by Lisa on September 20th.

Good luck to all who enter! And, in the meantime, if you have any questions or comments for Lisa about this interview or The Fairy Tale Tarot, please leave them here in the comments section. I know she’ll be stopping by to respond.

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All images © 2009 Lisa Hunt. Used by permission.

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