Richard Kehl

Richard Kehl is an artist, a reader, a wanderer and a wonderer. His pieces are gifts – letters from his mind, spirit and hand to ours. Today he is our guest blogger, contributing a group of images and a selection of  quotes. If you want to know more about how he works you can visit his studio via this blog post from Iskra Johnson. To see more of his work you can look in his books including Breathing On Your Own, It Takes A Long Time to Become Young, and How to Make A Zero Backwards. If you are in Seattle you can see the originals at Frederick Holmes and Company, a gallery in Pioneer Square.

All great work is preparing yourself for the accident to happen. (Sydney Lumet)

It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning. (Rainier Maria Rilke)

In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that no one else has thought of. (Robert Schumann)

According to The Oxford English Dictionary the word creativity didn’t appear in print until 1875. (Denise Shekerjian)

Wandering Goats

Goat border from the Poppyseed Cakes, by Maud and Miska Petersham

Last weekend I went on a road trip with my husband. I thought we would see friends, birds and beautiful landscapes. We did, but we also saw goats.

The word for goat in Spanish is cabra, which may or may not be related to the word capricious.

Maurice Sendak: Zlateh the Goat

We visited friends with goats, and were reminded of the origin of the word goatee.

Maud and Miska Petersham: Andrewshek and the White Goat

We saw goats and kids playing in fields.

Arthur Rackham Goats

We came across this photo in a book at El Nido, a sweet hotel in Tieton, WA.

Goats climbing a tree in Morocco

It was capricious the way that goats entered our trip and my mind.

De Tre Bukke Bruse, Norske Folkeeventyr 1840′s

I like leaving town and leaving my routines. While I may be looking for something in particular I often find something completely different, such as an inspiring goat.

Nanny Goat by Yevgeny Rachov

Here is a poem by Eve Merriam, lightly related to goats and wandering. I welcome your comments and rhymes about goats, goatees, meandering or caprice.

Catch a Little Rhyme

Once upon a time
I caught a little rhyme

I set it on the floor
but it ran right out the door

I chased it on my bicycle
but it melted to an icicle

I scooped it up in my hat
but it turned into a cat

I caught it by the tail
but it stretched into a whale

I followed it in a boat
but it changed into a goat

When I fed it tin and paper
it became a tall skyscraper

Then it grew into a kite
and flew far out of sight…

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ADDENDUM (May 26):

Here are some late breaking goats:

Goat collage by Deborah Mersky

Dancing Goat by James and Jonathan, 1956

Enjoy some Mama Lil’s peppers while watching this video of Bridget and Baylee eating lunch. They are the goats that inspired this post, owned by friends Kerry and David in eastern Washington.

 

Beastly

Last week Margaret wrote about joy and humor in children’s book illustrations. Those images made me smile. She made the point that you need to feel joy to paint joy. I would add that you can also feel joy when drawing or looking at images that are ghastly, beastly and bad. Sometimes a smile turns into a cackle.

This week I have been painting some gruesome creatures and thinking about why it is such fun to draw them.

Possibly the beasts are a form of self portraiture without shame. I don’t want hair sprouting from my elbows but I like to paint it.

This Russian lubok from 1760 shows a woman being punished for lust. For me the moral lesson is undermined by the beauty of the image.

Likewise when J.G. Posada shows the fate of a girl who is slandered.

Victor Vasnetsov’s Grandfather Water Sprite beckons, and seems to come without a lesson.

The word Zwerg in German means gnome or midget. Here is Der Zwerg Nase by Lisbeth Zwerger. Is he rolling along forward or backward?

Sometimes the monsters are a revelation – these Unclean Spirits Issuing from the Mouth of the Dragon, Beast and False Prophet were painted in 1255.

Or they can be your own family. Here is Loki’s Monstrous Brood, painted by Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire.

Maurice Sendak said that he modeled the Wild Things on his older relatives. The Giant Snorrasper is from 1962.

As Edward Gorey knows, the dark side can be delightful. And it won’t go away even if you want it to.

Fresh From the Oven

One hand
in the cookie jar
takes a cookie out.
How many put the cookie in
is what the world’s about.

When I first read the manuscript for Who Put the Cookies in the Cookie Jar? I was hungry to illustrate it. It is rhythmic and rhyming. I love to bake and eat cookies. George is a witty, warm and wonderful person and I wanted to work with him. But most of all I was drawn to the underlying meaning of the book: that every person’s contributions matter. As George put it, the book is an ode to the widest sense of community.

When I considered what this book should look like I thought of the WPA posters of the 1940′s. They were created to convey a message of community simply, powerfully and with graphic strength. I also looked at the works of Grant Wood because of their optimism and apparent lack of irony.   When I illustrate a book I always start by painting one finished illustration, before drawing any of the sketches. This was the first painting:All of the other paintings grew out of that “seed”painting.George’s text shows the joy that comes through doing work and being part of something bigger than yourself. I found that joy in working  on these paintings. Of course, any book about cookies must start and end by eating cookies. Please join us for a celebration at Eagle Harbor Books on April 14th from 3-4 PM.

Time Travel

My post today is not related to children’s books, except that illustrating children’s books led me to study Spanish. But it is a story, and a true story at that.

At the beginning of February I went to Guatemala with my friend Deborah Mersky to study Spanish at La Cooperativa, a wonderful school in San Pedro La Laguna on Lake Atitlan. Here is San Pedro himself in the town square.

The night before I left I came across some photos that my great uncle (Karl Paschkis) had taken in 1953. They were taken in Santiago, another town on Lake Atitlan. I took the photos with me.

The teachers at the school instantly recognized the people as being from Santiago because of the fabric in their clothing, and they thought that some of the same families might still be selling their wares at the market.

One afternoon Deborah and I took a small ferry across the lake to Santiago.

The town sprawled over the hill. Over 30,000 people live there now. Deborah and I showed the photos to several women at different stalls in the market, some of whom spoke only Tz’utujil, a Mayan language.  No luck. So after a while we gave up and went to see the church. In a courtyard behind the church several women were sweeping up leaves. I showed them the pictures. One woman was so excited that she practically grabbed them from me. She held the pictures to her chest. She knew the people in the photos and cared about them. We spent some time explaining who took the pictures and when, and trying to understand her relation to the the people in the pictures. I am still not totally sure if they were friends or family (madre o compadre) because Spanish was a second language for all of us and everyone was excited.

I told the women to keep the old photos – I don’t think they would have given them back to me in any case. Then Deborah took some pictures. Three little boys ran across the courtyard to get into this photo.

I can hardly believe that we found these people so quickly in a town that big with photos from 60 years ago. Maybe in 2073 someone can go back to Santiago and find these boys who will be old men by then, or someone who knew them.

Snakes

February 10th is the first day of the Chinese New Year, and 2013 is the Year of the Water Snake.

Snakes are often feared and disliked, but they do have some good qualities.

Here is a family portrait with snake by my husband, Joe Max Emminger.

Snakes are fun to draw. This pen drawing was done by John Coates in 1916.

Snakes move beautifully. This illustration is by Ivan Bilibin.The pattern gives the snake direction and dimension; without it the snake would almost be a blob. Snakes fit into small spaces.This drawing is by Adolf Wolfli who fills up every space.

Snakes survive in harsh environments, and they take care of themselves. Colonial Americans had a flag with the slogan “Don’t tread on me.”. This is my 2006 version.

Here is a poem by Julie Larios which celebrates snakes, dumplings and the street food of Beijing. I illustrated it with cut paper. I painted the paper before creating the paper cut.

So in honor of reptilian virtues let’s welcome the Year of the Snake. Please comment with your thoughts about snakes in life, snakes in art and what the Year of the Snake will bring.

Beginnings

Happy New Year 2013!

I am thinking about beginnings – beginning this new year and beginning new projects.

Starting anything is exciting but scary. I have to overcome rational and irrational fear to begin. Mainly I am afraid that a new idea is stupid and not worth pursuing. I have to ignore that fear until the idea is big enough to stand up for itself.

I am used to riding out the doubt when I am painting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But writing is less habitual and my foundations are shakier.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been beginning to learn Spanish for several years now.   My Spanish is halting but improving slowly. I love learning the words and grammar. This fall I have been writing poems in Spanish and English. I work on the poems in Spanish first. My lack of fluency somehow frees me from my fear of starting a poem. I wander around the words, look at them as strange and wondrous objects and pluck them for my poems. I am distracted from the amorphous fear of creating something from scratch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After I have written a poem in Spanish I work on the same poem in English. I go back and forth until both versions work. My final step is to have true Spanish speakers look at the poems and point out the egregious errors: thank you Fernando and Julie Larios, and Marta Seymour.

New ideas are skittish. They want to run away, like deer. Here is a sample of one of my bilingual efforts, illustrated with words and image.

What do you do to keep your ideas from running away?

Let It Snow

Seattle at this time of year is dark, wet and coldish. But it is not snowy, and in December I want snow.  Let it snow!

This illustration was painted by Alois Garigiet for the 1958 book The Snowstorm by Selina Chonz.

Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire wrote and illustrated Ola in 1932. I saw a documentary once where they demonstrated their technique. Every color was drawn in black and white on a separate sheet of translucent paper or acetate. They both worked on every drawing. The results shimmer.

Ivan Bilibin’s 1932 painting of Father Frost is stylized, but based on perfect observation of snow on trees. Also he uses color sparingly; the warm tones are a gift just like in a real winter landscape.

Last winter this painting was on my favorite blog, Animalarium. The palette is crazy and exhilarating.

Kamisaka Sekka’s snowy traveler has a completely different mood from Ezra Jack Keat’s Snowy Day illustration, but there is an echo in tilt of the bodies.

Despite the beauty of snow and the cheer of holiday lights I often feel the underlying melancholy of December. Maybe that is why this is my favorite winter poem:
In The Bleak Midwinter,  by Christina Rosetti

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen,
Snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

And here is a final painting by Alois Garigiet from The Snowstorm to banish any melancholy.

Some Bears

I should be writing about donkeys and elephants. I have already voted by mail and I am waiting for the election on Tuesday with fear, dread and a tiny bit of hope. Maybe, like me, you can hardly bear it. So here is some ursine distraction.

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Georgy Narbut’s bear is plump and solid despite having no shading or variation of tone in his body – just a well drawn form. The curve of the belt defines the bulk of the belly.

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Beth Van Hoesen’s perfect snout.

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Can you see Callisto hidden in Margaret Chodos-Irvine’s print? She is there. 
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These three bears in their shimmering izbushka are by Yuri Vasnetsov.
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Anonymous hung this bear in a tree and it has been there for centuries now.

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Tarnation and Angel, from Swamp Angel illustrated by Paul Zelinsky

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Little Bear by Maurice Sendak

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I hope these bears give you pleasure. Please vote for your favorite bear. Unlike in political contests any bear that you vote for wins.

¡Viva Neruda!

                                                                                                                                                                Several years ago I showed this image of a boater in a sea of words to Reka Simonsen, my editor at Holt. She sent me a wonderful manuscript - a biography of Pablo Neruda written by Monica Brown -and asked if I would like to illustrate it in this “wordy” style.This fall our book, Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People won an Orbis Pictus Honor Award and an Américas Award. I am in Washington, DC to receive the Américas award in a ceremony at the Library of Congress on October 5th. It is a huge honor and a thrill to be here.

Whenever I am given a manuscript to illustrate I see it as a door to go through. This book led me to Neruda’s poetry and to Chile. My husband and I visited Chile in 2009 and went to Neruda’s three homes.  Here is a  street in Valparaiso.

Because of this book I signed up for a Spanish class and I have continued studying Spanish since then. I still have a long way to go! For each illustration I harvested words from Neruda’s poems and memoirs. I wrote lists of words in English and Spanish that related to the subject of that page.

Then I painted the word flow taking words from my lists that rhymed and chimed. The words bounce off of each other with their sounds and their meanings. I considered the way that each word related to the words around it on all sides and I considered the way that the words cumulatively reinforced the meaning of Monica’s text.  

                                                                                                                                                                  Here is a picture of Neruda celebrating life at his House of Flowers in Spain.

If you would like to see the celebration at the Library of Congress you will soon be able to look at a webcast. Webcasts from other years are posted at the website of CLASP (Consortium of Latin American Studies).  ¡Viva Neruda!

Postscript:
Here are photos. One is of Margarita Engle (left), me (center) and Monica Brown(right). The other is of John Cole giving us a tour of the Library of Congress.