Influenced - Childhood Favourites
What shaped Momo's work
Hello, fellow (picture)book lovers!
Social media is a strange place. If you don’t see someone constantly posting updates, you think they are not doing much. I hate that because in most cases that’s not true. It’s very true for picture book makers as it often takes about a year from delivering the final artwork to the publication. For example, I finished all the artwork for my new book in April this year but it won’t come out until next May so I can’t share anything new for a while... But I love sharing things and writing newsletters so I’ve been thinking what I should do...
An inspiration came to me after I went to see the Young Artists’ Summer Show 23 at Royal Academy of Arts. (I’ll write about it in this month’s recap post.) The visit got me think about “inspiration”, “influence”, “originality” and all that jazz.
Art never gets born in a vacuum. We artist are at the mercy of inspirations and influences, but nonetheless we are aspire to be unique. Every artist dreams to find their “style” that people instantly recognise as yours, like Oliver Jeffers, Rebecca Green, Isabel Arsenault, Julia Sarda, Karl James Mountford to name a few. The last thing you want is to be called “copycat”, or worse “plagiarist”. Finding your own style is all about digesting the external elements such as inspirations and influences and turn them into something unique to you, isn’t it?
Inspiration means to me a kickstarter that ignites my creativity and it could be ANYTHING. On the other hand, influence has more formative effects over what and how I create. I thought it might be interesting to reflect on the things that have “influenced” me. This might give me an opportunity to look at my work with fresh eyes and show me where I want to go. If you find this interesting, or even inspiring, that would be my pleasure. OK, I’ll start with very beginning - my childhood favourites!
Guri and Gura （ぐりとぐら）by Reiko Nakagawa and Yuriko Yamawaki
This picture book series about two field mice and their adventures began in the 1960s and it is still one of the most popular children’s classics in Japan. Guri and Gura is the first in the series. In this story, Guri and Gura find a giant egg on their walk in the forest and they bake a giant sponge cake. You could say the story is about resourcefulness, friendship and sharing, blah blah blah, but all little Momo cared was the giant, golden sponge cake. I was obsessed and dreamed about it for years (I still do). And I thought the eggshell car was genius.
