The book is a collective response between artist and authors to the 2020 pandemic. The artist created a painting each day of mythological creatures from A-Z. The images express the way the artist herself was feeling on the day that she created them.

Sharing them on social media, excitement grew. A suggestion to make the stories into a book came from Katherine’s publisher-to-be, Tom Muir, sparking a flurry of stories from some talented authors. Tom’s contribution was ‘S is for Selkie’, and was originally a bedtime story he made up for his wife, Rhonda, when staying at Rackwick. The original artwork blends beautifully with the stories written especially for them by sixteen different authors. One special chapter features the unicorn, the story of which is Katherine’s own: a song written by her deceased husband, the great folk singer-songwriter and guitarist Bill Caddick – “Unicorns”.

Although this book features 26 full-colour illustrations, it is not a children’s storybook but a collection of wildly creative “myths” for our day arising out of an unusual time and with much to say to us today. 

Click on this link to order a copy of : Myths in Isolation

• Hardback £19.99
• Softback £15.99

Artist Katherine Soutar commented:

“This book would never have happened if the pandemic had not hit us in spring 2020.

“I work primarily as a book illustrator and during that first UK Covid lockdown in 2020 all my freelance work had suddenly been put on hold, and like many of us I was struggling with anxiety and feeling rather uncertain and adrift as everything in my world suddenly seemed to have utterly changed.

“I desperately needed a focus. To get back to drawing as a way of working through my feelings a friend suggested a daily drawing challenge, which was eventually to grow into this book. The idea of taking all these characters from world folklore and depicting them in isolation gave me a focus and a way to get my own feelings down on paper.

“The idea was to follow the alphabet. I would search for a character from world mythology each day beginning with the next letter and draw it by the day’s end. I found many characters of some letters to choose from and very few of others – X and Z were quite a challenge! – and was introduced to many myths and legends which were completely new to me along the way.

“These images are of themselves but also very much of me. They express so much about how I felt on the day I drew them. Some are almost unfinished, some polished. Some are dark and brooding, some thoughtful, some hopeful, even celebratory, some sad.

“It was Tom Muir of Orkneyology Press who first seriously suggested that perhaps they should have stories, and offered a beautiful one of his own – S for Selkie.

“The stories reflect the images beautifully, as they were written especially for them, in a complete reversal of the way these things usually work. They have been written by sixteen different writers and storytellers – some well-known, some just starting out, all talented and very generous souls.

“Their stories reflect the times we are all living through, but with the original folklore themes running through them like a bright thread that connects the old with the new. It’s a book for our time and a book for all times, as all the best folk tale books are.”

Review by Amy Douglas, traditional performance storyteller and author.

I’ve been a fan of Katherine Soutar Caddick for most of my life, so I knew this would be book a treasure and I wasn’t disappointed.

I love the premise of this book. We are used to an illustrator responding to written work – here the starting point is reversed. The creatures exquisitely rendered by Katherine are the inspiration for storytellers and authors. Katherine’s creatures capture perfect moments, the authors let them move, stretch out, give them life and a story.

The stories come from a wide variety of authors – from vibrant new voices to storytellers with decades of experience. The stories layer to create a diverse tapestry woven together by the continuous threads of Katherine’s distinctive detailed style and an all-pervading sense of wonder.

It is a book of mood pictures and moon dreams, moments of magic that have slipped through from the Otherworld. There are starlit sprinkled selkies dancing on pink sand; imps playing with pigeons while the Yeti looks out from the shadows between the fires.

This book was born in isolation and uncertainty, in a time when the world stopped. It grew in a rare communal moment of quiet contemplation and re-evaluation. It encapsulates the feelings of that time – anxiety, appreciation of the world around us and the importance of community and human contact. The pages of this book are filled with mystical creatures, but it is quintessentially about what it is to be human.

This is a book of wistful beauty, melancholy magic and yearning, bound together with golden threads of hope.

And when they asked me why I wept

Like one who for his dead love mourns

The only answer I could give

I dreamed that there were unicorns