something so utterly sublime, pencil and gouache on book page, Olivia Jeffries

Olivia Jeffries’ works reuse the careworn pages and covers of found books. Her drawings are charming, but it’s the ghostly imprint of illustrations from facing pages, her canvas’ smoothly disintegrating corners and the evocation of the familiar smell of damp, faintly mouldering book paper that I’m drawn to.

As a child, my elder brother’s bedroom was a geometrically convoluted loft space, the eaves of which hid afterthought cupboards and half-finished cubby-holes through which streetlight would leak at night. Inside (and strictly against my brother’s instructions), I’d find boxes of old books - the names of which I’ve long forgotten - clad in old-fashioned and uninviting yellowing glossy dust jackets that crinkled when I eased each book open. I read them regardless, mostly for the mystery of their provenance.