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| The original 1995 cover. |
In 1995, Western Publishing Company published a Golden Guide called Endangered Animals. I was the artist who created all of the artwork on the inside spreads in addition to the cover. It was almost a year's worth of work and I loved every minute of it. The art director, Remo Cosentino, was a fantastic guy and taught me, a newbie illustrator, a lot about the business of creating books. Unbeknownst to me, this book was to be among the last of that Golden Guide series to be published under the Western name, as the company was subsequently bought by St. Martin's Press in 1999, and then shortly thereafter was sold to Random House in 2001.
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| The current cover. |
In the ensuing melee of lawyers , moving vans, etc., that accompany the shift of one company's assets to another in a short period of time, all of the paintings for this book were lost.
All seventy-five paintings. Lost. Gone.
They were supposed to be returned to me as per the contractual agreement.
In the following years, my agent and I have in vain tried to locate anyone with any knowledge of the whereabouts of this group of paintings.
So, I send my plea out to the Internet: If anyone has any information about these lost paintings, I would surely appreciate knowing it. It is my hope to eventually recover them.
A big thank you!
