CGC Artist Showcase: Susan Garfield

When it comes to trading cards, the artwork featured is — to put it mildly — significant. Some collectors focus their collections on a particular artist (or artists) due to a preference in art style, proving just how impactful an artist’s work is to a product’s success.

The CGC Artist Showcase series is a celebration of these artists’ accomplishments and contributions to our favorite TCGs. In this installment, we showcase Susan Garfield, the sister of Richard Garfield and one of Magic: The Gathering’s preeminent contributors.

About Susan Garfield

Susan Garfield is a traditional and graphic artist who often works with paints. She is the sister to Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering and other popular card, tabletop and video games. Susan Garfield has only illustrated one card for her brother’s game, but it is an incredibly special card.

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Fraternal Exaltation

Fraternal Exaltation was the card commissioned by Richard Garfield to celebrate the birth of his second son, Schuyler. He asked his sister to illustrate the card, and she took on the task armed with paints.

The card’s front artwork seems to be painted with watercolors. It features a small room with a table, a baby basket, toys and a window. According to a CGC video that includes an interview with Susan Garfield, she took inspiration from T. S. Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” when designing the card. It is a Sorcery card that costs 4 blue mana, and its text says, “Sneak into your parents’ closet to get a deck. Your new brother is joining the game.” Fraternal Exaltation’s flavor text is a quote from Sandra Boynton’s children’s counting book: One, Two, Three! (1993).

Once Susan Garfield’s design was finalized, it was printed onto two sheets of Magic: The Gathering card stock and distributed to the Garfields’ friends, family and fellow Wizards of the Coast employees. It is estimated that only 220 copies of Fraternal Exaltation were printed in total, making these cards extremely rare on the secondary market.

Additionally, Richard Garfield gave an assembly of 20 Fraternal Exaltation cards to Susan Garfield as a gift and a thank-you for designing the card. For years, she kept these cards framed in her personal collection. In 2024, she disassembled the arrangement and re-created her painting by hand on the back of each card, then autographed and numbered them 1 through 20. Each of Garfield’s illustrations on the back of these Fraternal Exaltation Artist Copy cards are unique because of the pair of socks draped over the back of the chair. This was done as a friendly jab to her brother; Richard Garfield is well-known for seldom wearing matching pairs of socks.

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All 20 examples of these Fraternal Exaltation Artist Copy cards were graded by CGC. Each received a grade of at least CGC 7.5 or higher and are encapsulated with the yellow CGC Signature Series label.

For more information about these CGC-certified Fraternal Exaltation cards, and for an exclusive interview with Susan Garfield, check out the video below. Also, keep an eye out for more CGC Artist Showcase columns in the future.

About CGC

Since revolutionizing comic book grading in 2000, CGC has grown to include certification services for a vast variety of pop culture collectibles. These divisions include CGC Cards, CGC Video Games and CGC Home Video. CGC Cards provides expert card grading for sports cards, TCGs and non-sports cards. CGC Video Games is dedicated to video game grading for the most popular consoles, including Nintendo, Sega, Atari, PlayStation and more. CGC Home Video provides expert VHS grading in addition to other types of videocassettes, DVD, Blu-ray and more. CGC also offers seamless solutions for autograph collectors with CGC Signature Series and JSA Authentic Autograph services.