Well what a year! Lots happening and I'm taking on a lot more teaching. Currently working on a two day Illustration course with Georgie from
Pirrip Press for
Newlyn School of Art. I've taken on another day at
Plymouth College of Art, teaching the second and third years Illustration BA this year. Along with running my own evening course in
Illustration from Sept at PCA also.
Along with illustrating the books still, but there is good news. I had an article in the
Artists and Illustrators magazine this month. It's such a great article. Jenny White wrote it and did such a lovely job, and I only met her once. So have a look and a read and I'll add more next week.
The words
are here..it's a bit long in this format sorry!
Look for Caroline Pedler’s
work online and you may
conclude
that there are two artists with the same
name:
one, a prolific and versatile illustrator of
children’s
books and the other, a bold painter of fine
art in
the spirit of Cy Twombly and Antoni Tàpies.
These
are, in fact, two sides of the same person.
The
Truro-born artist has created bright and colourful
illustrations
for some 50 children’s books, yet over the past
four
years she has also developed her own darker, more
personal
style of painting, too. And rather than dividing her
time or
one taking preference over the other, these two
strands
have instead enriched her practice and given her
an outlet
for all sides of her personality.
Caroline’s
remarkable double-edged career began with
her
studying illustration at Falmouth School of Art and the
University
of Portsmouth, before she took time out to go
travelling
to Hong Kong, Bali and Australia. Those
experiences
abroad transformed her palette and helped
to kick
start her career as a professional illustrator. “It was
so
colourful out there that when I came back and created
my
portfolio, it was full of colour,” she says.
In 1997,
Hallmark Cards sat up and took notice, and
Caroline
has since been in continuous employment, first
creating
greetings cards and then illustrating children’s
books.
The popularity of her work for stories such as David
Bedford’s
Bedtime for Little Bears! and Julia Hubery’s
A Friend
Like You has resulted in 30,000
Caroline Pedler-illustrated
books
being borrowed from libraries in the last
year
alone. Likewise, in her pretty home just outside
Falmouth,
the bookshelves groan with dozens upon dozens
of
different titles – a riot of colour, fun and imagination.
Many of
the books that Caroline has worked on, including
the
recent Badger and the Great Storm, have been
published
by Little Tiger Press, who she credits with helping
to
develop her style. “When I started out, my illustrations
were all
drybrush and very heavy,” she explains. “Little
Tiger
worked with me quite hard to get me to loosen up.”
These
days Caroline switches between styles
effortlessly,
tailoring her approach to different
commissions.
Surprisingly, however, this is not something
she
recommends when teaching students at Newlyn
School of
Art. “I’m always telling my students not to have
too many
styles, but it’s worked to my favour in that I do
get bored
doing the same thing every time,” she says.
That
versatility took another leap forward in 2009
when she
decided to undertake an MA in illustration and
authorial practice at Falmouth
University, partly with a view
to writing her own books. “I needed something to
change
and I
went onto that MA thinking I would write [my own]
children’s
book. I’ve been illustrating other people’s books
for 16
years now and I sometimes can’t help but think that
I would
write the stories differently. I also felt it would be
nice to
have the proper me in my books. What actually
ended up
happening was that the MA opened up a
completely
different side of me.”
That side
is free, sometimes anarchic, and often darker
than her
bright, cheery illustrations. Caroline used it to
explore
work more in keeping with some of her artistic
heroes,
including the aforementioned Twombly and Tàpies,
as well
as the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, David
Hockney,
Mary Newcomb and contemporary illustrator
Laura
Carlin. To provide an outlet for the work, the Cornish
artist
has founded her own imprint. “I’ve called it An-ti-dote
Press,
because all the work I do off the back of my MA is an
antidote
to my commercial illustration work. I love doing the
bright
illustrations but I need that to be able to do this
other
work. At the moment, it’s nice having the two sides
to what I
do.”
Printed
in editions of just 25 each, her self-published
books
stretch the boundaries of contemporary illustration,
frequently
crossing over into fine art. Some of them are
best
described as picture books for grown-ups, while
others
point towards the way she would like to write
children’s
books.
The
subject matter is diverse across the six titles
released
so far. The Extra-Ordinary Events of Walking The
Dog is a
relatively straightforward daily journal of walks in
the local
fields and coastal paths, while the more surreal
catalogue
The Royal Beasts of Bialowitza sees bears
emerge
from wild and messy brushstrokes or sit in dainty
teacups.
It’s clear that the books have allowed Caroline to
give her
imagination and creativity free rein. “I make time
for this
work between books,” she says. “When a book is
finished,
I’ll treat myself: I’ll tidy the studio and then just
scruff
around in my sketchbooks.”
It’s a
welcome release from the rigours of the illustration
work. In
the past 12 months Caroline has completed no
less than
five books, which has required her to complete
a
double-page spread on average every single working day.
“I start
each day early and don’t really stop until I’ve
finished.
If the illustration is a bit more detailed it will take a
little
bit longer. The only downfall of the commercial work is
the
deadlines. Sometimes you’re working until midnight
then up
again in the morning and doing the same again.”
However,
it would be simplistic to say that her newfound
way of
working is the real Caroline Pedler and that her
commercial
work is just pretence. “There is a lot of me in
my
commercial work,” she says firmly. “It is very influenced
by
Watership Down, Disney, Winnie the Pooh – all those
things
from my childhood. My drawings can be very much
like that
– it’s one side of me.
“The way
I write, however, is naturally is more poetic;
there is
space in there, it’s a bit more ambiguous.
I’m
beginning to feel there’s a proper divide between that
and the
commercial work, and I suspect that the children’s
books I
want to do will fit more in the fine art side than into
the
commercial side.”
In
keeping with this fine art slant, Caroline has begun to
exhibit
her work now, including a solo show at Penzance’s
Newlyn
Art Gallery last October. She plans to show her work
at the
Affordable Art Fair too. “I’m going to see what comes
from that
and also just keep feeding the website that
features
that work, with the aim of making it strong
enough to
pay its own way.”
An-ti-dote
Press will play an important part in
documenting
these ongoing developments, as she intends
to
produce a book after every exhibition. “Each book is like
a full
stop, a punctuation mark at the end of the show, and
a prize
for creating that body of work.”
Caroline
is currently in the process of creating a large
studio in
her back garden, which will enable her to move
her work
into a bigger space. It’s a shift that chimes well
with her
expansive mood and the sense that she has
started
to explore a newer, bigger creative landscape.
That
said, she still treasures her commercial illustration
work, and
it looks likely that this will benefit from her
creative
experiments rather than being overtaken by them.
Earlier
this year she went to the Bologna Children’s Book
Fair in
Italy with Little Tiger Press and the experience was
a
highlight of her long and productive career to date. “I felt
so proud
to be part of this whole thing, and I don’t think I
would
ever want to stop doing children’s books,” she says.
“This is
something I love: I love the process, I love the
thumbnails,
I love seeing the finished product. It’s always
rewarding.
“As for
the other work,” she adds, tantalisingly, “I may go
down the
path of publishing something very different under
a
pseudonym.”
Establishing
two parallel careers in both fine art and
illustration
is no mean feat, but it is one that this talented
individual
appears more than able to balance beautifully
for many
years to come.
The students were incredible, in that they were all eyes open and ready to give anything a go. They turned up each week, showed their sketchbooks and homework tasks set each week and generally got stuck in. Some were more advanced in their practice and had more to show each week, but those who had less time and a less developed practice equally had so much to show, maybe not in quantity but in confidence as the weeks went on. It was like watching a caterpillar unravel into a beautiful fully fledged butterfly. Everyone showed so much more than I had imagined. There was vulnerability, laughter, sharing, caring, exploring and more than anything a curiosity and drive to create and be inspired.
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