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From the end of the 1970s to the beginning of the 1980s, over a period of six short years, Eric Ladd painted several SF&F covers. Here is the only (!) information on him on the web that I could find: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?27207

His two best paintings are the covers to the first editions of Elizabeth A. Lynn's The Dancers of Arun and The Northern Girl. The German edition of Jessica Amanda Salmonson's Amazons! features an uncensored version (breasts uncovered) of the latter painting and is one of the most memorable fantasy paintings of my life, probably because I fist encountered it in my teens :-)

Does anyone know what happened to him after 1983? Is he still alive? Did he stop painting?

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I knew Eric very well from 1978 to about 1990-91. I last saw Eric Ladd in the early 1990s. He had long dropped out of cover art, by the mid 80s, and went into more private and kind of abstract fine art work whilst he worked days for the State of Rhode Island on construction sites for the Division of Highways (I would say this was about 1993). I knew he was having some serious personal issues back then, and subsequently lost touch.

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I met Eric around 1989-90 (I also met his sister who was the model for the cover of "The Northern Girl". At the time he was moving away from that type of fantasy art and more into bikers and flames, skulls type of thing. He had an awesome painting of Frodo and Sam on the steps of Cirith Ungol which I bought from him. It has been in my possession for over 25 years.enter image description here

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  • Awesome! Thank you. What a cool sister to have!
    – user30564
    Commented Sep 14, 2016 at 15:17
  • John, if I wanted to locate the current owner of the original painting for Northern Girl, how would I go about that?
    – user30564
    Commented Sep 14, 2016 at 15:20
  • I would assume it belongs to the publishing company since they originally bought it from him. Unless it has been sold since then. The painting of Frodo and Sam was originally commissioned by Ballantine Books for the cover of "The Two Towers" but they never used it (their loss)
    – John
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 15:05
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    I met Mr. Ladd in the 1970s at a scifi convention (probably a Boskone), where he was displaying the Northern Girl painting. He did mention that his sister graciously posed for the painting. I don't know if he was pulling my leg or not, but he also said that they did not tell their mother about this because she would have be a bit upset.
    – Winchell Chung
    Commented Mar 7, 2021 at 21:12
  • Starting in the 60s, it became standard practice for artists to retain ownership of the original art, so the odds are very high that Ladd would have still owned the original of Northern Girl.
    – Mark Olson
    Commented Mar 7, 2021 at 21:44
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His brother is a potter in Wakefield, Rhode Island on High St., named Thomas Ladd. I spoke to him about his brother, Eric, a couple of years ago. He said he was a worker for the Department of Public Works and Highways, but up in Vermont or New Hampshire now.

Thomas had a metal statue of a naked female that looked like someone Eric would have done on a cover; I asked about it, and sure enough it was from Eric. One of just a few he cast. After a long multi-visit back and forth, Thomas sold it to me. Behold!!!

enter image description here

Not sure if the last photograph I uploaded made it to the board so I’m trying again. Here is another angle of the statue from Eric Ladd.

enter image description here

Yet again another angle; I still can’t believe I was able to buy this from Eric’s brother.

enter image description here

And last photograph, just the underside of the base, with Eric’s name and the year it was cast. Has anyone ever seen one of these? I bet not. Brother Thomas said there were a single digit of these made, and that Eric tried to sell a couple but wasn’t finding anyone interested. I can’t believe this wasn’t popular in 1992, she is brilliant!

enter image description here

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    Hi, welcome to SF&F. For those people who are not in the US, it might be helpful if you used state names, instead of abbreviations, and explained what "DPW" was.
    – DavidW
    Commented Mar 7, 2021 at 21:21
  • @Chris - As DavidW pointed out, if you want to add more images and/or text to an answer, you should do so by editing the answer, rather than creating multiple posts for the same answer.
    – LogicDictates
    Commented Mar 7, 2021 at 21:31
  • @Chris - I expanded the acronyms you used into what I assume they were meant to stand for. Feel free to edit them if I got any wrong.
    – LogicDictates
    Commented Mar 7, 2021 at 22:07

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