Thomas Canty Sketchbook

Page 3

 

 

 

     "Here are sketches for the 'Fairy Tale' books, some rougher than others, all variations on a central idea, or ideal. These are designs or 'icons' and not illustrations. I despair when writers or art directors want me to illustrate some particular scene -- it seems to me that it is the writer's job to paint imagery in the reader's mind. As the artist/designer, it's not my job to tell, or re-tell the story. It's to attract the reader and then, once the book is in their hands, to put them in the mood for a story -- receptive, open to magic and Romanticism. Which is why I always turn to the past for inspiration -- to those past masters of magic and Romanticism: Waterhouse, Whistler, Morris, Burne-Jones, Mucha, Klimdt, and all the rest. Not to copy them. But I look at their pictures, or hear certain kinds of old folk music, or read certain kinds of old folk tales, and they all inspire a certain mood. Then I take up my pencil and I try to work from that mood, and to create something that might, perhaps, someday, evoke that same mood in a person who picks up a book. Then, in that mood, they're ready to hear a story and my job has ended and the writer's work begins."

-- Tom Canty, letter dated July, 1985