22 April
Dear Charlie Mackesy,
I have enjoyed your work for a long time: the whimsical fluidity of your lines, the delicate colours, and the use of curves, all bring your world to life. But the thing I have enjoyed most of all, is the element of storytelling within your oeuvre, in particular your use of text to combine with images to create narrative.
The coherence you exhibit between your language, handwriting, and drawing, is very admirable to me and speaks of a more fully realised world throughout your work (and especially in your book, The Boy, The Mole, The Fox And The Horse). I am very interested in how you feel you developed your own personal style as an artist, as I feel your work is extremely recognisable. Would you say that your interest in including words with your images (and focusing on book illustration) comes from a desire to explain the image, or to add to it? I feel that your images often set the scene for the experience of the viewer, and then the text unfolds the narrative, or idea that you want the viewer to ponder, and I wonder if you would say this is true?
I find that increasingly, as an artist and a writer myself, the centre of making work for me is narrative — the story at the centre of the visuals or words. I believe intrinsically, humans enjoy art because we enjoy telling each other stories; to sit around a campfire and tell each other of our travels throughout both the world and life, is the most comforting experience we can have. This act of storytelling also allows us to impart to each other the lessons we have learned on our literal and figurative travels, without being didactic — stories after all, are often the easiest way to teach.
Your work I believe internalises this and achieves this feeling extremely successfully, but I am interested in what role narrative plays in your thought process, and if it is a constant centre of gravity the way that it is for me when I am working. Indeed, a good portion of art in the Western world was based in narrative depiction until the 20th century, and captured stories from history, mythology and religion. And in the Victorian era, there was a new (or perhaps renewed) focus on capturing everyday life and moments, as well as in use of symbols to layer narrative in paintings. Some of my favourite works of art emerged from this period, such as John Everett Millais’ Ophelia and The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse. The history of entwining narrative into visual artworks is long, rich and fascinating, and it is always enjoyable to me to enter new discussions on this subject and to learn more about how other artists relate to this history.
In The Boy, The Mole, The Fox And The Horse, you use simple language to encapsulate beautifully universal concepts, and bring an optimistic feeling throughout the story. There is also a use of weather, such as rainbows and clouds, to explain experiences. And I think that’s what I enjoy most about it: the use of simple language to communicate wider narrative and a positive atmosphere. The long tradition of narrative in art (and of course the use of illustration in literature) has been in large part continued most powerfully by children’s book illustration, with its whimsical and positive exploration of storytelling and imagery. I would love to hear your thoughts on all this, and where you think the exploration of narrative in visual art may go in future, both in book illustration and in other fields such as painting. The way that we take in imagery has changed so much due to much of it being via the internet, but I believe that these principles of storytelling, and how it draws us in, still retain their universal appeal.
Yours sincerely,
Eleanor
Eleanor
Eleanor