Pixie-Pamela Colman Smith

About me:

Here are some images from my deck, known originally as "Tarot Cards" by Waite and Smith published by Rider in 1909. Some now call it "Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot Deck!

I hope you enjoy my MySpace page, my friend and web mistress created it as a tribute for me. She will add more artwork and some of my writing to blogs as well from time to time. She offered to do this for me, since I can not, being I am in the Next World-- and know nothing of computers and such!

My given name is (Corinne) Pamela Colman Smith, but my friends all call me Pixie, no one ever calls me anything else! I was, and am an artist, illustrator, writer, singer of songs, teller of tales, and more. I was born in London, but growing up I spent much of my time between England and Jamaica and spent some time in America on the East Coast. My mother’s side of the family was quite artistic and interested in mysticism and my father loved to collect art. Perhaps this explains my involvement both as an artist and my interest in the occult. My mother died when I was 10, and I was often separated from my father due to his work with the West India Improvement Company. In my early teens I had the good fortune of traveling with my dear friend actress Ellen Terry, and I discovered the magical world of the theatre.

I studied art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn under the positively inspiring Arthur Dow. I worked as a theatrical designer, book illustrator and wrote and illustrated several books of my own, telling the folk stories that I learned as a child in Jamaica. I used to love to dramatically tell the tales to party guests at my flat, sitting upon the floor in the old dialect and using wooden figures I made myself to act out the parts. This was how I learned these stories and it made my heart glad to share the experience with my friends who begged for more! I had a party every week, in my flat in Chelsea, and all the great artists, actors, poets, and musicians of my time would frequent them! What great times, sipping Opal Hush (one of my favorite drinks) and telling stories, play my grand piano, sing songs, talk about philosophy, art, literature, timely topics and nonsense as well!

I did so many things in my life, I designed sets for the theater, published my writing and illustrations, created fine art, was an occultist, I survived the blitz, joined the woman’s suffrage movement, and so much more!

I was a member of The Hermetic Order of Golden Dawn for a while, that is where I met Arthur Edward Waite. In my partnership with him and I completed a big job for very little cash that met with some popularity and continued to be a bigger hit after I crossed over into the Next World in 1951. You may have heard of it, when It was released it was called simply “Tarot Cards!” You probably know this as the Rider-Waite Tarot, or as I am delighted to discover, as many are now calling it the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot!!! They finally added my black and white illustrations to the book in 1911 and I quite preferred looking at the black and white versions of these, because the lithography that was used to print the cards themselves originally was so badly done, although it is fun to see the old original deck is still printed from facsimile copies after all these years! At the time, I never knew how popular the deck would become, and I never really received much notoriety from it during my lifetime, too bad there was no way for me to receive royalties from future sales, when I left that life, my debts were payed off by selling off all my artwork and possessions. But now, as I glance forward into the future, as only a talented visionary such as myself may do, I am amazed at the following the Tarot deck has received!! I'm pleased that my artwork and writings are being re-discovered!!

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