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As a child she:
- Doodled in her notebooks
- Was an avid reader
- Drew her own pictures if she didn't like the book illustrations
- Didn't aspire to be an illustrator
- Happened upon the Ontario School of Art & Design at a high school
career day
What's important to her (besides the fun work)?
- Her husband Ian and two daughters Zoe and Tara
- She is and always has been an avid reader.
Who does she work with?
- She collaborates with husband Ian Crysler
who photographs
her work. His skill in lighting and photography show the illustrations at their best and most
powerful. For instance on the page 12/13 spread in The Subway Mouse
the illusion of a swiftly moving train is
created through I would guess a slight movement of the camera on a
slow shutter speed.
- Numerous authors including:
- Beverly Allison
- Mary Blakeslee
- Jo Ellen Bogart
- Susan V. Bosak
- Edith Newlin Chase
- Heather Collins, Vladyana Krykorka,
Robin Muller, Phoebe Gilman,
Maryann Kovalski, & Mark
Thurman
- Mary Alice Downie
- Vivian Gouled
- Susan Green and Sharon Siamon
- Joan Irvine
- Celia Barker Lottridge
- Marilyn Linton
- Kenneth Oppel
- Joanne Oppenheim
- Betty Waterton
What art education does she have?
- 1980 Graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design
with Honours
Who learns from her?
Kathryn Shoemaker shares Barbara Reid's
and Kim
Fernandes' work with her students to show the possibilities of the
3rd dimension in her course in children's book
illustration at Langara Junior College.
What kind of work does she do?
- Writes and illustrates her own books
- Works as a freelance illustrator
- Illustrates children's books, textbooks
and magazines
- Has worked in a number of different media including
ink, paint and unique bas-relief plasticine
illustrations, but has "used a mixture of white glue and paint to get a
transparent effect" (Reid) for lime jello salad in The Party
How did she get started working in plasticine?
"I started out working in plasticine for a school
project at the Ontario College of Art. We had to reproduce a famous painting,
but in a different medium, and I was going nuts trying to do the Birth of Venus
in tissue paper. It wasn't working, so I tried some plasticine I had lying
around the house. After that, I started adding work in plasticine to my
portfolio, at first mostly caricatures; it has a humour -- childish, yet
sophisticated -- that appeals to adults and kids."
(Barbara Reid quoted in "The Art of the Children's Book Illustrator: Eight
Leading Artists Talk about Their Work", Quill & Quire, October
1985, volume 51, no. 10. Toronto: Key Publishers, 1985. p. 12.)
The first book illustrated with her unique
approach (bas-relief
illustrations in plasticine) was The New Baby Calf in 1984.
Some twenty years later Barbara pronounces, "Expressing
my thoughts with pictures is still fun and it's always a thrill to sit down with
a new manuscript and bring it to life for other readers."
What is she like?
My experience when I heard Barbara give a keynote address, participated
in her plasticine workshop and sat across from her at lunch at the
Manitoba School Library Association Conference in October, 2004 was that
she is a very warm and sharing woman with a zest for life. It has been
said that she has a loony sense of humour. She was totally game when I
asked her to sign the books I purchased to "grandma B's future
grandkids".
Although The Subway Mouse was
not published until 2003 I think Nib was introduced in 1986 on page 14 of
Have You Seen Birds? At least that's what I'd like to believe.
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