A magazine artist’s craft and changing livelihood
Born in New York in 1914, Finlay studied art at high school and took various jobs before beginning his professional illustration career. His work appeared in Weird Tales in 1935, when he was twenty-one. Further commissions came from fantasy and science-fiction magazines and from The American Weekly, the newspaper supplement associated with A. Merritt.
Stippling and scratchboard allowed him to create elaborate textures and contrasts, but their slow execution made earning a living difficult. He received the 1953 Hugo for interior illustration. As pulp markets contracted during the 1950s, astrology magazines became an important source of work alongside occasional science-fiction commissions. He also wrote poetry, much of it published after his death in 1971. Later portfolios and collections gave an independent readership to pictures originally encountered within magazines.
A small figure made overwhelmingly threatening
Burn, Witch, Burn! is Merritt’s narrative; Finlay supplies the signed illustrations associated with the library’s reading collection. Keeping these contributions distinct allows a picture to be considered as an interpretation of a scene.
Crowded dolls, a man attacked by a small assailant and the doll-maker surrounded by flames concentrate different moments of the story. Scale becomes unstable: a miniature body can dominate the action, while a human figure seems overwhelmed by darkness or movement. Dense mark-making rewards close inspection, but the arrangement of the whole image supplies immediate dramatic force. Returning each drawing to its nearby passage shows what the artist selects, compresses and makes visible from the prose.
