Keith Parkinson Dies

Keith Parkinson, fantasy artist, died of complications from leukemia on October 26, four days after his 47th birthday.

Parkinson was one of the most impressive artists working at TSR, and did some very pretty covers for Dragon magazine and Dungeons & Dragons books, which etched themselves subliminally into my growing gamer brain. I spent an evening with Aya once going over her “Art of Dungeons & Dragons” book while she talked about the different artists, their skills and technical shortcomings, and what the paintings meant for her as a gamer and an artist. This work, a lot of it journeyman efforts by young and still developing artists, talented but sometimes technically limited, really means something to the kids who consume it: the chicks in chainmail, the hooded and cloaked knights, the dragons, the dark forests and campfires, the distant mountains on the horizon – these are the things and places where we were escaping to in our heads.

And I’m thinking “only 10 years older than me?”