Kirkus Interview, USA, June 2011
On publication of ‘Lost and Found’, and omnibus edition comprising three picture books, The Rabbits, The Lost Thing and The Red Tree, Scholastic 2011.
In “The Red Tree,” even though your compositions sometimes look bleak—with their earth-toned palette and seemingly sterile environment—there are always glimmers of warmth. For instance, we see a red leaf first over the heroine’s bed, but then if we look closely, we can find it in every composition thereafter. The red tree, or evidence of the makings of it, is with her all the time. The intimidating totem-looking piece above the stairs (for “the world is a deaf machine” resembles the majestic flying being (“wonderful things are passing you by”) later in the story. What is it that attracts you to that juxtaposition?
I suppose that every work of art is a real balancing act, you’re dealing with a constant tension between opposites, beginning with the most obvious paradox: trying to represent reality by creating a fictional world. In the case of The Red Tree, there is another problem contained within this, the task of creating images of sadness and depression without actually being sad and depressing, and possibly distancing the reader.
In any case, I feel that real life is not quite one thing or another. It’s a strange and surprising mixture of feelings, often contradictory feelings. I tried to reflect this in the treatment of each strange scenario on the book, so there are both cold and warm elements achieving a kind of realistic equilibrium; I have to draw each image many times to get that right, trying to make everything feel ‘true’ to experience, while at the same time quite mysterious and open to interpretation. The ‘rhyme’ of shapes that you mention, such as those wing-like structures that appear on both frightening and delightful objects, perhaps suggest that nothing is inherently good or bad, but is all a matter of context and interpretation. Light is used in a similar way, it can be either the liberating light of a distant sky or glowing tree; or the imprisoning light of an nightmarish stage-play, or endless white desert; shadows too can be either safe or oppressive. Like reality, this fictional world has no innate symbolism, it’s just one strange thing after another, and it’s up to each individual to craft a response.
I think there is actually a slightly comical undercurrent too, below every disturbing scene, a fundamental absurdity that’s actually entertaining and inviting. The Red Tree is actually one of my most playful and colourful books, perhaps not what you’d expect if you read the text in isolation; ‘the day begins with nothing to look forward to’ and so on. Of course, the presence of the small red leaf on each page is a quiet counterpoint to those dull, melancholy words. An inconspicuous disclaimer: joy and optimism have not actually departed, but only remain unnoticed, like a leaf in a gutter - you can pick it up at any moment. It’s great to see that so many readers – especially children – do just that.
Was it enjoyable to figure out the visual segue between the stories? We loved the way the red leaf plays off the squiggly arrow that’s so crucial to the events in “The Lost Thing.” It’s as if you’re giving a hint of its importance before the story begins. Then you make it into a bottle-top, as if it’s just one more in the hero’s collection, something that could be overlooked. Like the Lost Thing itself. But, in a change of strategy, the segue into "The Rabbits," moves from the “good guy,” the custodian-like figure who gives the boy the direction to where the Lost Thing may belong, into the villainous ship that’s about to arrive with the Rabbits in tow.
Those are very interesting observations! It’s worth noting here that each book was originally produced as an independent project, and not originally intended to be linked together. When my editor, Arthur Levine, approached me with the suggestion that these three picture books might work as a kind of triptych, I could nevertheless see his point. Even though they are stylistically so different – self-consciously so – there are definite thematic continuities. The red leaf in The Red Tree and the squiggly arrow in The Lost Thing, for instance, share a common purpose, representing some kind of hidden pathway, an opportunity to escape a bleak situation (personal depression, or a hostile bureaucracy). There is also something like this in The Rabbits; occasionally we see in the background an individual ‘rabbit’ transfixed by the reflection of clouds or stars in a puddle of water, or a flower in the middle of a grey city. They have stopped working on the great engine of their civilization to observe these small gifts of nature. It’s a detail most readers are unlikely to notice, which is part of the point.
More generally, because the three books were produced around the same time, from 1998 to 2001, they are invested with a lot of my preoccupations as a young author and illustrator. I’m wary of trying to describe these, because the books do a much better job! But it’s something to do with the relationship between power and ignorance, inspiration and apathy, light and darkness – and constant ambiguity that passes the responsibility of finding meaning back to the reader.
The transition from the creature mopping away in darkeness in The Lost Thing, to the arrival of the ship at night in The Rabbits is perhaps the most interesting link between two tales. Both images I consider very ambiguous. The janitor creature is ‘good’, but trapped in a world of bureaucratic darkness, there’s a sense they he might subvert a system, but the system cannot be changed. The conclusion of The Lost Thing can be seen as either optimistic or pessimistic, depending on your point of view. Similarly, the arrival of the rabbits in their magnificent ship is, I think, an scene of great promise. The rabbits are not evil or villainous – they are simply ignorant, and only interested in their own culture, which in some ways has grown beyond their control. One is left wondering how their response to the new world and it’s indigenous creatures might have been approached differently, a question contained by the final illustration. Each story leaves the reader with a moral puzzle, hopefully, rather than any judgement about good or bad characters.
In “The Lost Thing,” there’s a refrain, “Nobody else seemed to notice it was there. Too busy… [“doing beach stuff,” “discussing current events”], I guess.” The ending suggests that the boy hero, too, is in danger of ceasing to notice the important things, much like the people in “The Water Buffalo” in your Tales from Outer Suburbia. All of your books/artwork subtly asks people (of all ages) to pay attention. Why is that important?
That’s a big question! I think it gets right to the heart of books, reading, and most other forms of communication really. As mentioned above, a lot of the ‘darkness’ in the world seems to occur when people stop being curious and believe that everything they know is exclusively correct: that all current knowledge must then be defended against change or revision. Consider extreme fundamentalism, oppressive regimes, prejudice, racism, sexism and many other dangerous beliefs; what they all have in common is a strong aversion to considering alternative viewpoints. In fact, one might argue that this is a root cause of all corruption: any intellectual cul-de-sac that repels self-criticism.
All of us are vulnerable to this inclination, and it can begin with simply not noticing things, or failing to empathize with people, ideas or experiences that are unfamiliar; to only recognize value that’s already be ascribed, to carve up the world with absolute opinions. Children in particular probably recognize this as a peculiar failing of adults, given that children are constantly immersed in difference and novelty – the world is still so strange – and they know how arbitrary language, theory and meaning can be. I think it’s important that we hold on to those notions as we get older, as we mistakenly think that knowledge is more important than imagination, and things crystallize into hard-edged categories.
I suppose that characters such as the Lost Thing, the water buffalo, or the tiny foreign exchange student ‘Eric’ are all little reminders that the world is much larger and stranger than we might think – no matter how much we know, there’s always an alternative point of view missed along the way. And often that way of seeing cannot be summarized or explained precisely. So the water buffalo never says what he is pointing at in the distance: to do so would defeat all curiosity. And, more to the point, perhaps he doesn’t even know! Of course, the weirdness of the whole situation – as with The Lost Thing or The Arrival – compels us to pay attention, to not expect that we already understand what’s going on. In other words, to keep an open mind.
Fans of your work will notice recurring themes. Even though these three pieces may be new to them, they precede Tales from Outer Suburbia. We couldn’t help noticing some visual echoes. The red leaf of The Red Tree, for instance, could be a cousin to the leafy foreign exchange student in “Eric.” The undersea helmet the girl wears in that same story looks nearly identical to that of the diver stranger in “Broken Toys” and featured on the cover of Tales from Outer Suburbia. The small cloudlike puffs as a means of some kind of silent communication for the Lost Thing seem to reverberate with the spread of cloud formations in The Arrival. Do you think of each of your works as a kind of laboratory for your next projects? Or are there certain themes—visual or otherwise—that fascinate you and find their way into your stories and artwork?
Well, yes to both of those questions, and I think that’s a good way of putting it ‘each work is a laboratory for the next project’ – although I’m rarely thinking so far ahead! You could say that they are all part of one big singular creative project, which began in childhood. Creatively, I tend to use the same creative toolkit over and over again.
I guess this is personal style: not just how one draws or writes, but a recurring fascination with certain objects and feelings. I could intellectualize my decision to use clouds or diving helmets for instance (something to do with freedom, occlusion, boundaries between inner and outer worlds), but deep down, I just really like them! Most drawing begins that way, not with an idea, but a simple feeling of attraction to something that I’ve seen. Much of any creative act is a process of trying to figure out why I like that thing so much. Similarly, the kind of zig-zag line that forms the crest of Eric’s head, or the shape of a maple leaf (as well as many plants and machines in The Arrival) is something that I really like drawing, right down the to the semi-conscious micro-action of skipping from point to point. Who knows why? As the painter Georges Braque put it, “the most important thing in art is the thing you can’t explain.” Often I know when a painting or story is working very well, because it feels natural without me having much idea of what it really means; a sense of just transferring my curiosity about the real world onto another world made of paper and paint.
We thought that Edward Hopper is likely an artist whose work you admire. His Early Sunday Morning (1930) seems like an inspiration for the image that accompanies “The next morning we caught a tram into the city” in “The Lost Thing,” and also for the spare landscapes in “Stick Figures” from Suburbia. But we also wondered about Chirico as an influence, with your use of palette (especially in “The Rabbits,” in that spread for "the rabbits spread across the country. No mountain could stop them; no desert, no river"), and—in “The Lost Thing”--the classic forms such as pillars and arches, superimposed with gears and other mechanized parts, or curious objects isolated in an austere landscape. Are we off-base? Are there other influences?
Those are good observations and yes, Chirico and Hopper are influences on The Lost Thing, and I make a point of ‘quoting’ them quite directly in some landscape forms. Other artistic influences include Heironymous Bosch, the film maker Terry Gilliam and the cartoonist Gary Larson. Actually, I could probably identify a few hundred diverse influences, from a broad spectrum of visual experience, not just the world of art, film, and books: photos I took at a nearby abandoned power station, sketches of clouds, a handbook for antique collectors (which inspired many creatures, along with pictures of tiny marine animals), some plumbing behind a supermarket, my Dad’s old textbooks from his days as an engineering student, my own childhood experiences of catching crabs and octopi, an adopted stray cat, and a small collection of bottle-tops. When coming up with ideas, and later refining them, I will often use whatever is close to hand, or springs to mind, to trust in luck and intuition more than logic.
The Rabbits is a little different, and I always enjoy hearing readers from other countries trying to pick influences or explain the colours in that book! That’s because so much of it draws upon Australian visual culture, from colonial art to modernism, and even a few nods toward indigenous painting. Colourwise, the palette comes from my experience as a landscape painter in Western Australia – rocks, skies and fields there are very vibrant in colour, and some lighting effects that seem ‘exaggerated’ to a foreign eye are actually fairly realistic. The idea of “curious objects isolated in an austere landscape” (a good summary of my work!) might also describe much of the Australia, so in many ways my artwork reflects where I come from.
Is there a noticeable difference in your creative approach to illustration when you’re writing your own text versus creating images for someone else’s words, as you did with John Marsden’s "The Rabbits"?
It’s not terribly different, actually. In the case of The Rabbits, John was not involved in the illustration process, so there was no collaboration as such. I was left to come up with my own visual story, especially given that the text is so invitingly spare and enigmatic. I essentially ‘wrote’ a new text to wrap around John’s concepts, a text made of pictures rather than words, something to do with an alien race, cultural misunderstanding and industry. When working on my own books, I always feel that the duality of narrative remains, that there is a story told in words, and a rather different story told in pictures, the two working together in harmony. My ideas as a writer are often different to my ideas as an illustrator, even on the same story. The Lost Thing did not have much sense of landscape when I initially wrote it, and I had no firm idea what the creature looked like or how it behaved.
When writing my own text, however, I’m far more ruthless when it comes to revision. There’s much greater freedom to chop and change, and to sometimes abandon a project altogether without having to disappoint another writer. This is essentially why I prefer to only work on my own projects, there is a greater capacity for evolution. For example, The Arrival was originally a 32-page picture book with a written text accompanying images – that was the original contract. I eventually decided to remove all text, and argued to expand the work to 128 pages. That’s not something I would dream of doing if working with another writer, I’d feel too bound to honor their original script and intention.
In your Author’s Note for this collection, you mention “universes colliding” in “The Rabbits” and also an “absence of any direct language” as a unifying factor in this trio of stories. These themes also run throughout your wordless book The Arrival, where the human newcomers you follow enter, in essence, an alien land in which their languages have no meaning. Some of the strongest connections made in your books develop between humans and “other” beings. Is connection the important thing, whether between two humans, or humans and other living things? Do you think this is related to your interest in science fiction, too (as you discuss in your Author’s Note)?
Again very big questions – I could write a whole thesis in response! But to keep it brief, I think that’s right, that “connection” itself is the most important thing. Particularly relationships between people, things and environments that might at first seem difficult, due to problems of language, cultural blindness or conflicting interest. It’s certainly spawned in part from my interest in science fiction, but more broadly than that, it comes from a deeper concern about how we as humans relate to non-human things, an environmental concern. I often imagine we are living in a kind of “dark age” at the moment, in terms of our relationship to the natural environment, and the way that industrialization has consumed nature, instead of pursuing a more desireable co-evolution, where the interests of other animals, plants and ecological systems are considered. It’s an age of serious disconnection, abstraction and fractured spirit, which is as artistically interesting as it is worrying and ominous. The world in The Arrival represents something of an alternative, a multicultural society in the broadest possible sense, where various creatures co-exist in a fairly organic-looking metropolis, and natural and artificial designs seem cross-pollinated. It’s not a perfect world, but at least the ideological premise here is one of pluralism, inclusion and mutual respect. Of course, The Rabbits presents an opposite scenario, where cultural chauvinism and disconnection leads to a general collapse, both of the natural world, and the grand civilization that has rushed to conquer it.
Was there a big difference between working on your book “The Lost Thing” and working on its film version, for which you received an Academy Award? – Congratulations!
On one hand, yes, a big difference. The Lost Thing was a very solitary project as a book, and I did not even consult with my editor, or anyone else for that matter, while I was working on it over the course of a year (with only a $2000 advance!). I did worry that it might be very idiosyncratic for that reason, but figured that’s exactly what I wanted from this story, a really odd and insular other-worldliness. As a film project, the same story moved into a highly collaborative, complex and costly medium: constant meetings and discussions were essential, and the budget was intimidating, even for the creation of a relatively minor film. The project spanned many more years than the book, involving the meticulous building of each scene digitally, interrupted by all manner of technical and logistical headaches. I also noticed that in film production there is far more pressure to observe stylistic convention and anticipate an audience response, the very things I avoid thinking about as an artist! I occasionally had to make compromises that I would probably resist as a writer and illustrator, such is the highly collaborative nature of film.
That said, how could the projects be at all similar? Well, regardless of medium or industry, the storytelling problems and objectives were pretty much identical. We were constantly trying to strike the right balance between emotional warmth and distance, clarity and strangeness, seriousness and humor, and everything came down to revision and editing, as is the case with a picture book. We thought of each shot in the film as a painting, needing to be composed with as much care, with great attention paid to texture and lighting. Of course, the fact that the picture book existed already was indispensable; so many problems of style, structure and philosophical purpose had been solved. And given the sheer duration of the animation process, the simple charm of the original story helped keep everyone on course and motivated; there was always a well-worn copy of the book on every desk, to refer to in times of crisis. I think that’s one of the great things about a picture book, its ability to hold complex ideas in a fairly simple bubble, restricted to thirty or so pages. It’s really taught me that every word and image must count, be thoroughly considered, and do several tasks simultaneously. With that illustration experience behind me, the transition to directing a short film was not such a big a leap. The ideas, ambitions and problems are all the same – as is the need for extreme patience!