I had mentioned the last time we talked that a publisher had contacted me and asked that I illustrate a poem in their upcoming book called “Power Poems for Small Humans”.
Eventually, I was paired with poet Liz Morgan, whose poem is entitled “When Someone Asks About My Drawing of My Family”
I won’t share the poem here, but its about non-nuclear families.
My original idea was inspired by the videos you may have seen that run on the theme of a blind dog who has a seeing eye goat bff, a donkey and a pig who are best friends, animals who adopt animals from other species, and a long time favourite: Roy and Silo, the two male penguins at NYC’s Central Park Zoo, who first fell in love, and then year after year, tried to raise a clutch of rocks, until the zookeepers finally gave them an eggs to hatch and raise.
The sketch I shared with you six weeks ago of the little pig, was part of a larger piece that was going to be a farmyard composed of many iterations of different types of animal families.
But then I was thinking about the brief I was given:
“… something between an illustration and an environment…the important
thing is that the artwork meet and embellish the emotional place of the poem.
Now, I don’t know about you, but that gave me pause! It
reminded me of when I was in second year at Uni, and a professor asked for “an
intelligent, emotional response” to a text we had been given to read, and no
further instruction. And it was worth 40% of our mark! Boy, that struck terror into my heart. Lol
Anyway, as I considered this “between an illustration and an
environment” I thought that perhaps I was being too literal. That a more
abstract idea was called for.
I slept on it overnight, and when I thought about it the next
day, I could “see” this two page spread as you see it here, and realized that
was they way to go. Shockingly, there are birds. lol But Roy and Silo!
In general, my most successful pieces have always been the
ones that I see as if they were already made, before they’re actually made.
So here it is, “After Roy and Silo”.
Now that the publisher has the images for use in the book, I
will unmount (dismount?) this piece and put a group of hares or perhaps a fox
family in that blank space where the poem will be in the book.
When that’s
done, I’ll show you that version too. J
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Way to go Kit. I am assuming the publisher is thrilled!
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