In dark times you have to seek out beautiful things: that which exists for the sole purpose of spurring contemplation, admiration, and tranquillity. This is a blogpost series I’ve been planning for a while now, in which I chose a particular illustration from a picture book by one of my favourite artists and look at it in more detail: the colours, the composition, the symbolism, all that jazz.
I have several illustrators in mind: Jackie Morris, Trina Schart Hyman, P.J. Lynch, Kinuko Craft, Jane Ray, Ruth Sanderson, and the plan is to work through all of their work as the mood takes me, looking at each of their published books and picking out the most impressive illustration in each one – or at least the one that speaks mostly strongly to me.
Lately I've been poring over the work of Angela Barrett, an illustrator I've loved for a long time now, though I've only recently been inspired to explore her back catalogue. One trip through the library records later, and I settled down to relax into her body of work, which largely consists of children's stories, with a particular emphasis on fairy tales.
