(This is the park unpainted)Papier-mâché, newspaper, gooey clay and a can of white spray paint: sound like the stuff you’d find in a landfill. To me it is what is in my toolbox. And it is so me -- so Richard Dreyfuss in “Close Encounter of the Third Kind” -- to start building a mountain out of mash potatoes on the kitchen table and end up with chicken wire and dirt all over my living room. All I was going to do was draw a map of “Plush Park” (where my story is taking place) but lines on a paper just don’t cut it for me. I need the thing in front of me for it to be real. Thus began another on of my typical obsessions.
(This is the park painted. They are doing sidewalk art and behind them is a field of poppies)
I gathered all the aforementioned garbage and began building the thing that wasn’t yet clear in my head. I ruled out going to a craft store and buying toy grass, tiny trees and all the fake nature one can buy to build a scale landscape for two reasons: one, it would look so boring and, two, I was kind of broke -- which is good since that always sparked creativity. I was building a set for am arty-farty movie -- like the “Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” where the set are expressionistic painting. Next I thought it would look like Van Gogh had painted it. But in the end I made it look like what I imagined the painting in the book to be. It should be done in my style.
I wanted it to look like a three dimensional version of what I have been doing for rough sketches for the book -- loose and with mostly white, like a piece of paper with splashes of color to it -- a bit of Matisse, Picasso and the Impressionist as done by someone in love with simple directness of Chinese brush drawings.
Now that I’ve assembled the whole mess with my usual child-like enthusiasm plush park (like Paris, London or the 100 Acre Wood) is now a real place.
By the way I am working on five painting for the book and should post them before to long. I am doing large acrylic painting -- they take long than I thought but are turning out well.
