Lightning in a Bottle: Femke Hiemstra
Cavalier of Dawn - Femke Hiemstra - Aetherdrift Special Guests
Lightning in a Bottle is short form featurette celebrating the work of an artist who, at the time of writing, has illustrated exactly one Magic card. It’s a spotlight on their achievement, and an appetizer to exploring their larger body of work.
Femke Hiemstra (b. 1974) is a Dutch fine artist and illustrator, living and working in The Netherlands.
She works traditionally in both acrylic paint and graphite pencil, each to astoundingly detailed effect. Her work has been described in many ways, by some as pop surrealism, or lowbrow, or as she said in a 2014 WOW x WOW interview, Neo-Fabulism. Not one for labels, she’s allowed the Neo-Fabulism moniker to stick because of the ever present anthropomorphism and narrative in her work. It’s a blend of New Contemporary art with Imaginative Realism, with genius like this laid directly at their intersection.
She studied at both the School of Graphic Arts in Amsterdam, and later the School of Arts in Utrecht, both in the Netherlands. Originally (and still occasionally) pursuing freelance illustration, she began her fine art career around 2006. Now living and working in Zutphen, she paints these surrealist narratives that are exhibited all over the world.
A fine artist for the last two decades, she returned to her illustration roots in 2024, making her Magic: The Gathering debut as a Special Guest of 2025’s Aetherdrift with a single card, Cavalier of Dawn:
This Magic: The Gathering expansion invited Secret Lair, Magic’s vehicle for experimental card designs and art styles, to contribute ten cards to the larger catalog. The Special Guests were art directed by Jacob Covey, and much like the larger set, opened up countless doors for new artists to enter the realm of Magic.
Cavalier of Dawn is a work of graphite with digital color, imbued with all the detail and storytelling fans of Hiemstra’s work have come to know and love.
We see the Sun made man, a striped soldier striding upon a cloud, trusty steed at the ready and illuminated with the same power. The location is unknown. Are we in the sky? On the ground? Transported into an eighteenth century landscape, or a Sun tarot card, telling our future? Or perhaps it is simply a dream, a subconscious projection of the coming of our own Cavalier of Dawn. The work is a convergence of a dozen potential stories, and brings Femke’s fabulist, narrative energy to Magic: The Gathering and Secret Lair in an incredibly inspiring way.
Hiemstra also recently made her first foray into the world of Magic: The Gathering artist proofs as well, creating some of the most intricate pencil sketches the hobby has ever seen:
Three of these sketches are miniature versions of alternate compositions, other versions of the Cavalier created during the development of the card. The last is inspired by The Fall of Satan to the Earth by Gustave Doré (1866), a brilliant juxtaposition fitting of the card itself, and once again joining rich history with contemporary reimagination.
They were met with raucous approval from the collecting community, and solidified her place as a tiny teller of tales in this new world as well. More of these miniature masterpieces will be forthcoming, and who knows what worlds we’ll be transported to.
Thunderstruck
This artwork hit me harder than any in recent memory. I’ve spent this year learning all I can about Hiemstra and the history of her work, and it’s this very painting that was the motivation for this entire new series; I needed to find a place to celebrate it, and it’s creator. I can’t be normal about it. It really is that good, and that important to what Magic: The Gathering and Secret Lair artwork can be.
Artworks like this are exactly the mission of Secret Lair. To bring an artist, a pioneer in their space outside the game, to Magic. And let them do what they do. The result is often groundbreakingly beautiful, and an artistic harmony for everyone involved. The Cavalier of Dawn opens a pathway not just for other art from Femke, but for other artists like her, working at the top of their game, just in styles not normally found in this game.
It’s importance cannot be stressed enough, and I’m so glad it exists.
You can follow the artist on Instagram and BlueSky, as well as on her website.
The control of value is so so insane!!!!! Loved to read this, loved to see her various works and APs