Graeme Base Quotes

I guess I don't come to the work without baggage. I have an idea of what I want my pictures to look like in my head, and if they don't match up, I find it frustrating.

I was born in Amersham, England on 6/4/58. My family moved to Australia when I was eight, and I went to Box Hill High School and then Melbourne High School. I liked to draw and write at school, and I liked books by J.R.R. Tolkien, A.A. Milne and Kenneth Grahame.

I've had an absolutely charmed life in every aspect of it. I do for my job what I would do for a hobby if it wasn't my job. Half the secret of happiness, I'm ecstatically happily married with three great kids, you know. It's been a blessed life.

I have pets, but they're the really ordinary sort - yellow Labrador, tabby cat, white rabbit, a few goldfish - that kind of stuff. Nothing very ... extravagant or unusual or exotic, but I find, in terms of inspiration, Mother Nature is just it.

I decided to take my foot off the pedal with all the detail. I'm sure after 'Animalia' and 'The Eleventh Hour,' readers thought that's what to expect from Graeme Base. With 'The Sign of the Seahorse,' I took a step away from the puzzle-book genre - that was more of an adventure story.

It was always that detail that drove me. Ever since I was a little kid, I used to get into the nitty gritty ... when I was drawing army tanks or monsters, I'd do every nut and rivet, and I'd do every scale on the dragon's back. It was just the way I was built.

I began illustrating children's books because of a growing disillusionment with the sort of work I was doing in the advertising industry. Book publishing offered me the chance to be far more creative.

Ever since I was a kid, I might have been eleven or twelve. I'd be telling anyone who would listen that when I grew up, I wanted to be an artist.

My only real hobby is playing music. I write a lot of music on guitar and keyboards and hope one day to make a record or maybe even write the score for a film.

I hope that there's a difference between being childish and childlike and that I'm the latter, if you take my meaning. I often sort of wonder. I don't think I'm a terribly good grown-up; I don't take responsibility easily or well in many areas of life. Finance and stuff like that, I'm absolutely appalling.

I'm a relentlessly optimistic person, and I think 'The Waterhole' is a story of hope and that even though nature goes through cycles, we prevail in the end.

Whether one likes it or not, the screen is a profoundly important source of imagery and storytelling for this generation. For me, books remain a stunning place to tell stories, but the screen has a place.

The English probably do that wordplay kind of humour and whimsy better than anyone, and I've always felt that my writing goes more to that than what I did when I came to Australia.

I still feel childlike. Not childish - there's a difference. But to be childlike is to be savoured and treasured. I offer my books to those who like the things of childhood; the challenges, intrigue, joy and fun.

Some people can sit and enjoy the view ... some people like to take photos to feel complete. I need to somehow possess it in some other way. I just have to somehow grasp it and take it home in a more fulsome way. It's where ideas come from.