I want kids to understand that making pictures is similar to making music; there are so many instruments and so many tunes that the possibilities for how you play are truly limitless.
Make it all about the work. Everything else will follow.
I never demonstrate how art should be made or what the outcome should look like. Instead, give kids the tools and the materials to make their own art. Have them experience the process.
I wanted to show that an African-American artist could make it in this country on a national level in the graphic arts. I want to be a strong role model for my family and for other African Americans.
If you do the best work you can, the reward is ultimately your self-satisfaction - the sense that you have done the best you can. And then there's that piece of how others respond.
I have to believe that when I finish a project, that I will not only grow as an artist, but as a person.
I've always felt that if I worked hard enough and continued to refine my craft, while staying curious about our times and our world, I just might have something to contribute.
We live in a time when there is an abundance of ways we can express ourselves.
A sense of community has always been important to me. I understood very early that I could not grow as an artist or as a person without being connected to institutions and clients that served the community.
All of us have places that we can go where we feel most complete.
I like to talk about my challenges as they relate to all of us, and I try to leave them with a sense of what it feels like to succeed at something and to arrive at a goal. I talk a lot about finding that thing that you feel is important to you, that's your calling, and about the reward you will get from staying with it, no matter what the challenges are.
I feel the calmest when I'm drawing or when I'm creating images. I love connecting the mind with the hand and producing something - that is very comforting and centering for me.
African American writers and artists, by the very nature of what they do, will actually enhance or bring together people in a way that might be very, very healthy.
Though the blame cannot be placed entirely on publishers, I do think a more diverse pool of editors would go a long way toward broadening the perspective. Our role is to work together to create books that act as wide-open doors - books that allow all children to walk through and feel safe enough to stay.
Receiving both the Coretta Scott King - Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award suggests I have succeeded, at least in terms of my own goals, in my intent to make art that moves children.
I like to bring a certain sense of humanity and detail to my work, and watercolor allows me to do that. I have fascination and wonder about the line and transparent quality or properties in watercolor. I use watercolor to give voice to what I would like to talk about.
I do think it's important to expose kids to artists.
Drawing creates its own kind of private space. Coupled with certain interests that I want to speak to in my art, it's really kind of a safe haven for me. Creating art is not only a comfort zone, but also a way of speaking to my passions.
There's probably more of a struggle to get material and narratives published that really speak to black culture. And that has a lot to do with the mergers and buyouts and the corporations being more in control of the purse strings. We find that the projects have to come with higher expectations rather than books that just should be published. That's disturbing because we might find fewer and fewer children's books by African Americans or with black cultural themes.
The process of creating art allows me to learn about the subject I'm illustrating. So, if I want to learn more about plantation life and slavery, I try to find clients that will give me an opportunity to work on projects that will visualize those experiences of the enslaved African and people of color. I get to learn about my roots, and my artwork allows the reader into that world by creating images that are accessible.
I'm often in conversations with people who have learning disabilities, and they talk about how they were teased and perhaps laughed at sometimes as children. That was never the case with me. Maybe it was something about my personality, my temperament, but I don't ever remember being teased. I remember the awkwardness of leaving class to go to a special class, but that's all.
If I were to give myself a pat on the back, it would be for sticking with bookmaking as my primary way of expressing myself over the span of fifty years.
I try not to respond with a pep talk, such as, "Everyone has talent, just try, you'll see." I skirt those kinds of answers.
Part of what I'm doing with generations is that I try to express in my work pieces of my growing up years that I can look back on with great fondness - specifically, a sense of family.
I visited the Museum of Modern Art and viewed the exhibition of Picasso's sculptures, and I couldn't help but think about what it would be like to have a room full of school children explore Picasso's approach to making art.
