Mary at the Cottage Door Painting

A lifelong love of literature, research, and art is the heart of my work as an illustrator. I’m convinced that “a studio is a place of study,” as designer Bruce Mau phrases it, so before I paint, I read, research, and learn. Every illustration project is an excuse to study! I paint with gouache, watercolor pencil, acrylic, watercolor, sometimes bringing in pastels, graphite or ink. For inspiration and instruction, I often study medieval portraiture, landscapes by Alice and Martin Provensen, William Morris textile designs, vintage songbooks, Carl and Karin Larsson interiors, Norwegian rosemaling, postwar fashion illustration, Pennsylvania Dutch motifs, Mary Cassatt portraits, folk embroidery, the Scandinavian cookbooks of Beatrice Ojakangas, midcentury typography, L. S. Lowry’s cityscapes, and everything I can find by the children’s illustrator Aurelius Battaglia. In terms of style and technique, the way I draw and paint has probably been informed by my study of the Provensen’s landscapes, as well as those of Anna Mary Robertson (Grandma) Moses. I’m intrigued and inspired by the disquieting paintings and drawings of Remedios Varo, Monika Beisner, Gertrude Abercrombie, and Adrienne Ségur. (I could look at their wonderfully weird work for hours!) I would also say that Golden Age fairytale illustrations, as well as picturebooks of the 1950s-1970s, have had an effect on how my artwork looks. And as a child I loved the graceful drawing style of cartoonist Lynn Johnston, so it’s likely that her nimble and fluid linework, like that of the great illustrator Trina Schart Hyman, has influenced my work in some subtle way, as well. Literature, too, has had a profound effect on both my writing and painting, with the Brontë sisters, Daphne du Maurier, and Shirley Jackson shaping my aesthetic in a powerful way. My thinking and my work have also been informed by zines, the verse of poet Christina Rossetti, and British 18th- and 19th-century epistolary novels. When I draw and paint, I choose objects I find fascinating, beautiful in form, or potentially meaningful. Sometimes I simply paint things I love. (For example, vintage dishware and linens, early American furniture, lace patterns, historical costume, and Swedish breads!) Frequently, I choose subjects that I think will offer me a rewarding technical challenge. Have you ever been so scared to draw a wicker chair that you put it off for three days? I have! But then once I began in earnest, I loved it.