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Artist Message
I drew a lot as a kid because that is what everyone around me did. Both my grandparents were painters and my grandfather always invited other people to add to his paintings. Until we were teen-agers, my younger sister, Chloe, and I traveled and performed around the States and Europe with our parents' puppet theater company, The Mystic Paper Beasts. I missed some school but kept books of drawings, language and tokens from the foreign places I went to. My parents kept me up with the multiplication tables and cursive letters, so I didn't fall too far behind. After I spent time in Indonesia studying traditional Balinese miniature paintings, I realized I wanted to go to art school. I spent my last year of R.I.S.D. in Rome where I painted lots of pictures of saints. My first illustration job was a drawing for the New Yorker, and soon after Chronicle Books published my book of saints, "Lucy's Eyes and Margaret's Dragon; Lives of the Virgin Saints." Anne Schwartz at Atheneum offered me my first children's book, "Mr. Semolina-Semolinus, A Greek Folktale". I have illustrated several books since then. |
