What a celebration of art celebrating life! Art as exploration, imagination, examination, as a way of recording, remembering, enjoying life, as a mean for creating ideas. Art as something very personal, and yet something that has positive power when shared.
This beautiful big hardback book follows an artist who happens to be a multi-coloured dragon-dinosaur, with body language which suggests that she is a child. She’s a confirmation for children, and a reminder to adults, that most children are naturally artists, driven instinctively to create art. This Artist’s story is a reminder that art is also a sensitive and emotional thing that sometimes requires bravery and sometimes requires the kindness and encouragement of others in order to flourish.
This Artist bravely goes on a journey away from her colourful wild jungle home, away from her loved ones, out of her comfort zone. She goes to ‘a rushing, bustling city’ in which she is church-spire tall, and her colours are in stark contrast to the plain greys and yellows, shadows and sunlight, all around. Buildings are dull boxes on end, people scurrying, ant-like, below them. To the Artist, those plain box buildings are exciting spaces in need of pictures. So, she paints some of them. The effect on the city’s people (and, if you look carefully, an odd assortment of other sorts of creature!) is to bring them together, slow them down, make them look, and cheer them up.
But that’s not the end of things. We follow the emotional roller-coaster of creation. Mistakes, embarrassment, feeling you’re the only one, wanting to give up. But, then, those who have loved your work boost you with confidence once more. The small white bird of hope reappears (that’s my interpretation; that the white bird = hope), and the Artist bravely gets back to work, recording life’s messy beauty even more wonderfully.
And there’s also a personal happy ending for the Artist, which you can discover by (visually) reading this lovely book to the end!
A beautiful, humorous, poignant, truthful, imaginative, inspiring book about wonder, and about generosity. Highly recommended.
1 comment:
This book looks like a lot of fun!
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