Catherine Rayner interview: Look and learn

Published on Thursday 9 July 2009 15:24

A GALLERY OWNER ONCE TOLD Catherine Rayner that of all the work he displayed, hers gave the most pleasure to the widest range of viewers, from grannies right down to little kids. "I like the fact that my illustrations make people smile," says the Edinburgh College of Art graduate, and recent recipient of the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal, the UK's most prestigious accolade for children's book illustration, for her 2008 publication, Harris Finds His Feet.

Rayner, 27, based the book on her own experience as a little girl plagued by enormous, unwieldy feet (she's since grown into them), as well as hours spent intently observing actual hares doing what comes naturally. In bestowing the award, Joy Court, chair of the Greenaway judging panel, said, "Harris is a triumph, from the way he moves and his expressions to his velvety fur. His relationship with his granddad is beautifully evoked, as are the textures of the exquisite landscapes around him, in a book that oozes charm and glows with colour."

It's a particular thrill to meet an artist whose work I've admired for years. Long before her first children's book, Augustus and his Smile, hit the shops, I'd drooled over her limited-edition prints of hares and other animals, and bought the more affordable greeting cards to send (grudgingly) to pals.

Some of those images will join a host of other children's book illustrations on show in Bruntsfield's brand new Fidra Gallery. Designed to last a summer only – come September this will be an independent bookshop – the space is the brainchild of Vanessa and Malcolm Robertson, owners of Fidra Publishers, and, a few doors away, the Children's Bookshop, which opened in 2007 and quickly became a beloved Morningside institution.

Indeed, it's shaping up to be a bumper summer for Edinburgh-based fans of children's book illustration – as we mentioned last week, a retrospective of work by John Burningham, who won the Kate Greenaway Medal in 1963 for his magical tale Borka: The Adventures of a Goose With No Feathers, has just opened at the Dovecot Studios on Infirmary Street and runs until September.

When I pop in to the Fidra Gallery they're still hanging the summer exhibition. I spot work by Shirley Hughes, Quentin Blake, Lauren Child and Ross Collins, even an original Captain Pugwash by John Ryan.

It's a breathtaking array, so it's all the more shocking when Rayner says she confronts tremendous snobbery about her work. "There are still people who are into art who say to me – a lot – 'You're not an artist, you're an illustrator.' I just laugh. They don't realise that you have to be able to draw (in the first place] and then it's another thing entirely to create a believable character. You can't do that until you can do the traditional thing first."

Citing, for example, the layers of acrylic and metallic ink and pencil crayon comprising Posy the kitten's tabby stripes, Vanessa says: "Technically Catherine's work is amazing. And if you look at people like Shirley Hughes, her work is very painterly. It is fine art. There are people doing amazing stuff using graphic design, painting, textures and collage. People have this idea that illustrations for children's books are limited, but actually there's an enormous breadth and diversity."

Certainly among us ordinary folks – non-critics, "merely" art appreciators – there's a burgeoning trend for collecting illustrations to hang at home. "Perhaps people are getting more sceptical about what we consider fine art," says Vanessa. "They don't want to have to worry about whether or not they understand it.

"I know from my own experience that I recently went to an exhibition and saw a pile of scrap metal called Untitled. It didn't challenge me in any way that was meaningful, whereas I look at an illustration and respond in a different way. I have one of Catherine's paintings at home and every time I see it my heart lifts."

Newly appointed children's laureate Anthony Browne, who gave the world the glorious Gorilla, admits to mixed feelings about selling his illustrations, but insists: "I don't think there's this huge difference that others perceive there being between fine art and illustration. I do hear some paintings denigrated by the words 'Oh, they're illustrative.' As though that's somehow second best."

To what does he credit the trend for collecting illustration? "One of the things I told myself when I became the laureate was that I mustn't try and pretend to have expert opinions," he laughs; but when I press, he says: "It's partly to do with the nostalgia for images people remember from when they were children, partly to do with buying something that will gain in value, and also, yes, it's an indication that people who buy illustrations don't see this gap we're supposed to see between the two. I'm not knocking the idea at all. As long as people are taking an interest in illustration then it's all to the good."

Rayner says: "With my big illustrations, people who buy them say they saw it and it made them laugh. These are people who might not have bought art before, because maybe they found it too intimidating.

"I leave a lot of space in my pictures. Some people say: 'Oh, you forgot to chop the paper off.' They don't understand how I'm using the white space. Other people really enjoy having a work of art that they can build a story around. They tell me they own one of my pieces and that every morning they tell each other a new story about what's going on (just off the page]. I get e-mails ages later saying: 'We still sit every day and wonder what Imogen is up to,' and that's exactly what I want. They're still engaged with the art and still happy with it."

Both artists love the alchemical interaction between words and pictures that's unique to children's books. Rayner recalls fond memories of discovering this interplay as a girl growing up in Yorkshire.

"I'm the youngest of three so I had all the books (from] my sister and brother, plus my own. I love the secret thing, the fact that there's this whole world inside two covers that pops out and evolves between the pages. I love the entire idea of books as objects. An early favourite of mine was The Secret Staircase by Jill Barklem. All of us had a copy of Gorilla, and I loved The Borrowers, The Big Friendly Giant and Judith Kerr's Mog – I used to notice things like the food in Mog's bowl."

That's a key point. One of the pleasures of illustrating her own works – to date, only Posy features text by another author – is controlling the work each element performs. "You can really play around with it. For instance, 'It was a very sunny day, blah, blah, blah.' You can draw that, and save the words for communicating another idea."

"There's a gap between the pictures and the words," adds Browne. "In the best picture books they don't do the same things. The pictures sometimes tell us something about how someone's feeling or what they're thinking about or what's going to happen next, and it's that dynamism, that tension between the pictures and the words that's filled by the readers' imagination, which makes them very special."

Rayner – who next month becomes the Edinburgh Book Festival's first artist-in-residence – has seen it work first-hand on her many school visits. She finds them rewarding, not least because "they really remind you why you do your job. Seeing kids' faces – mouths open, listening, gasping and noticing different things."

So there's an argument that illustrated books are valuable because of the way that they teach children to look and see, and the way they access new worlds to explore?

"Look at Harris. It's about growing up and gaining independence of your family and realising what bits of your body are for and what these amazing bits that you're not quite sure about can do. I think it would be hard going, getting that across in words, whereas you can do it more easily with images. Children can choose what they want to take from a book at any given reading. Your mind goes to the bit of the illustration that you connect with."

"Images in picture books are the first art that most children see," says Browne. "But they aren't valued. Children are taught that growing up and maturing and becoming educated is a matter of moving away from pictures and into words, and I think it's very unfortunate.

"I also think that picture books are part of the special relationship that develops between a child and an adult. The conversations parents have with children when they're looking at a picture book together is not like the kind of conversation we have if they're just reading a story."

If you're keen to launch a dialogue of your own, have a giggle or relive some of the best years of your life, pay a visit to Fidra Gallery this summer. Who knows, you just might walk out in the company of Harris, Posy or even Pugwash.

&#149 Fidra Gallery, 181 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh, opens today and will remain open until September. For details about the exhibition, visit www.fidragallery.co.uk.

&#149 Catherine Rayner's most recent children's book, Sylvia and Bird, is out now from Little Tiger Press. Ernest will be published in September, by Macmillan.