On view April 15–August 7
Oliver Jeffers (Irish, born 1977), World of Stories, Child of Books, 2016, mixed media, collage, gouache, pencil, and pen, National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature, Abilene, Texas. © 2016 Oliver Jeffers.
Born in Australia and raised in Northern Ireland, Oliver Jeffers is an award-winning artist and author working in painting, bookmaking, illustration, collage, performance, and sculpture. This retrospective exhibition showcases nearly one hundred artworks from Jeffers’s picture books throughout his career. From the first sketches of How to Catch a Star to the alternate covers of Here We Are, the exhibition brings together never-before-seen original artworks alongside the familiar faces of Jeffers’s worlds. The exhibition will feature eighty line drawings, sketches, and finished illustrations for sixteen children’s picture books, including the wildly popular The Day the Crayons Quit and its sequel, The Day the Crayons Came Home; Here We Are; The Incredible Book Eating Boy; This Moose Belongs to Me; and Once Upon an Alphabet.
“A lot of my art has been about duality and looking at things from two perspectives. I had a wonderful upbringing in Belfast. Yes, I saw some terrible things. Yes, I learned that people have an awful tendency to be mean to each other and inflict violence, but I also saw the capacity for love. I think I learned the importance of tolerance at an early age.”
—Oliver Jeffers
Oliver Jeffers (Irish, born 1977), Stuck Print with Whale, pages 20–21, 2011, digital print, National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature, Abilene, Texas. © 2011 Oliver Jeffers.
