Ted Nasmith is an internationally recognized illustrator, renowned for his photorealistic illustrations of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fiction. He was born in Goderich, Ontario, and upon graduating from art school was immediately hired by a studio specializing in architectural renderings. This became Nasmith's career focus while he produced a growing body of Tolkien-inspired illustrations, created out of his abiding love of the books, which he first encountered as a teenager and art student.
His ambition was to create what he saw as quasi-classical paintings for Tolkien's books based on his sense of the importance of the sweeping landscape vistas so eloquently and centrally featured in Tolkien's fantasy, as well as on the author's unique evocations of faeries.
The early 1970s saw the publication of many illustrated calendars, which coincided with Nasmith's ambition to have his work reach a wide audience someday, and this hope was fulfilled in the late eighties with his first published calendars. In 1990 his first full calendar was published, followed by others in quick succession, and in the mid-nineties his sketches for The Silmarillion were accepted for the first-ever illustrated edition of that great work of fantasy. He has continued to create many new Tolkien-inspired paintings, including a series of three calendars celebrating The Lord of the Rings, and this growing body of artwork has come to be appreciated as some of the finest of its kind.
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