Judith Clute

In 2017, Clute won the "Best Artist Award" delivered by the European Science Fiction Society.

In 2006, Farah Mendlesohn compiled a festschrift for John and Judith Clute entitled Polder: A Festschrift for John Clute and Judith Clute, saying in the book’s introduction: “Judith Clute has been referred to as a fantasy artist. Within the genre this tends to conjure up images of fantasy illustration, but Judith’s work is not an illustration of fantasy, but part of the fantastic genre itself … Judith turns the world around, exposes the mimetic as gloriously unnatural.” Later on in the book Candas Jane Dorsey comments that Clute “sees the world with that fresh, slightly sideways glance that imposes no filters, and draws no foregone conclusions. As a result of combining that directness of observation with an accumulation of wordless wisdom, Judith has an eccentric and unique artistic vision, and thus a unique and eccentric body of significant work.”

In Interzone #188, her artwork was displayed on the cover, and her life and work was discussed in an article entitled "Still Turning Motif's Upside Down" by Paul Brazier. In 2003, Clute acted in the film "A Short Film about John Bolton" directed by Neil Gaiman. In 2018, Clute participated in the pop-up show 'An Arts Lab Continuum' at Spitalfields Studios, with six of the other artists who had been involved in the 1960s and early 1970s in the arts labs of Drury Lane and Robert Street. In December 2019, Clute did a radio interview with Chiara Ambrosio for "The Raft, a London Story" on Resonance radio, 104.4 fm.

In 1975, for New Worlds, Clute did an India ink illustration for "Daddy's Girl" by Joanna Russ. It marked the beginning of the style she is known for: "constructing things from disparate elements". For the next five decades, Clute continued to produce works in this style, participating in 37 painting exhibitions to date and creating illustrations for a number of well-known science fiction authors and magazines. Interzone #42 (December 1990), an all-female issue, used illustrations by Clute throughout.

Judith Clute (born 1942) is a Canadian painter, graphic designer, print-maker, and illustrator who has created cover art and illustrations for a number of well-known science fiction authors and magazines. Clute has British citizenship and works in London. She is also a tour guide with the Original London Walks.

Judith Rosanne Wood James was born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1942, but grew up in Toronto and matriculated from Bishop Strachan School in 1961. In the same year she was invited to be a painting apprentice for two years in Vancouver with Françoise Andre and Charles Stegeman. She married John Clute in 1964 and they moved to Camden Town in London in 1969. From the beginning of her time in London, Clute became involved with the New Arts Lab. In June 1970, she participated in an exhibition with Pamela Zoline entitled "Judith Clute: Diagrams/Similes and Pamela Zoline: Things in the World" at the London New Arts Lab. In the exhibition's press release Clute's paintings were described as having "mount[ed] campaigns against easy reading".

In Judith Clute's Tantalizing 37th album Geoff Ryman said about her one-person show at Camden Images Gallery that "this is Judith Clute's 37th exhibition … You could call it expressionist except that works express calm, fluidity, balance, and elegance rather than rage of energy. Even when the content seems to be screaming."