A biography for Anthony Brownehasn’t been written yet.
“After art college, I got a job as a medical illustrator, and I was pretty good. I had to imagine what was going on in the operations because the photographs just showed a mess.”
“Writers are articulate. Artists find it more difficult.”
“Everyone can draw when they're five. Most of us lose the ability.”
“As adults, we've seen so much before that we often turn the pages of a picture book without really looking. Young children tend to look more carefully.”
“M dad was a boxer, so he had this fierce, physical presence.”
“As a father, I understand the importance of the bond that develops through reading picture books with your child.”
“Worrying can be a kind of caring, and as such is a healthy part of a balanced emotional life.”
“What excites me about picture books is the gap between pictures and words. Sometimes the pictures can tell a slightly different story or tell more about the story, about how someone is thinking or feeling.”
“I've always felt that I was a bit of an outsider to the British children's-book illustration scene, because I don't work in line and wash.”
“I find it incredible and outrageous that public and school libraries are being forced to close - we'll all pay the price in the long term.”
“I'm impressed by the way some illustrators develop their images on computers, but it's too late for me to start, and I'm still in love with paper and paint and pencils.”
“Something happens to our creativity as we go through the education process; most of us lose touch with it.”
“I grew up with an older brother who was always stronger and faster and better than me at everything, but I was close enough in age to try and compete, so we had a competitive childhood.”
“From 17 to 21, I was obsessed by sport and art. In art, I loved the pre-Raphaelites and Rembrandt first. Then I discovered Salvador Dali, and it was like finding something I already knew.”
“When I talk to children, I show them a typical drawing I made when I was six and point out to them that when I was their age, I didn't draw any better than any of them.”
“As a child, I'd always liked cowboys and Indians stories where there were two layers - gruesome in the foreground but funny in the background.”
“I see 'Hansel and Gretel' as a breakthrough book for me, and one of the reasons is because I started to apply meaning to the hidden details.”
“Many adults that I have met in my time believed that picture books are 'babyish'. I hope I have changed minds on this, as I set out to do.”
“A lot of my characters are underdogs or sad or lonely, but I had a comfortable, golden sort of childhood.”
“The illustrations in picture books are the first paintings most children see, and because of that, they are incredibly important. What we see and share at that age stays with us for life.”