Primrose Hill, London

When I was illustrating the covers for NYRB's Kingsley Amis titles I drew a lot more than what ended up being used. This, I believe, was for the collection of stories, but it might just as well have been meant for his novel Ending Up, because this is where Amis ended up: writing in the back garden of the house where he lived in Primrose Hill, London. A house belonging to his ex-wife (Elizabeth Jane Howard) and her new husband, a surprisingly congenial ending for a somewhat irascible character. Note the gin bottle and siphon placed next to his chair. Sara Kramer art directed this series.

This is the sort of drawing which I could imagine working very nicely as a print. I wouldn't mind having it on my own wall (if my own walls weren't so filled with bookcases.) I wouldn't mind writing my late novels in such a setting.

A Hill Town In Italy

 Architecture is a complex enough puzzle when it's looked at straight on, but that complexity increases when you are looking down a hill or along a street. This explains why those views are the most interesting to look at. Capturing that complexity as simply as possible is the trick. Using fewer colors is a start.

City Landscape

Views like this appeal to me. The receding perspective isn't carried by handsome fronts of houses and boulevard elms, it's garages and garbage cans and telephone poles. This time of year there isn't any softening texture of foliage, it's all lines and planes and fissures.

A Tree at Lacock Abbey

I drew this from an old photograph of a tree at Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire. I couldn't draw it from life because I've never been to Lacock; I've been to Wiltshire. Anyway, the tree was blown down in a high wind a century ago. I find I draw better from an armchair, indoors, out of the wind. Sometimes what I draw can tell you where I'd like to be, but if I was there I doubt I'd draw. I might take pictures. I'd probably sit and read a book, no doubt about someplace else.

A Drawing of a Bridge in Bath

Bath is one of my favorite cities, and I'm sad to admit I've only spent two days in it, more like a day and a half, an evening in between. I hardly know it. I know it better from books by Austen and Smollett and Dickens and the films made from them. I did this drawing from a postcard I bought when I was there.

Roma

When it's cold and gray here in Minneapolis it sometimes helps to spend a little time drawing a warmer, sunnier place. Somewhere I've been, in this case Rome, my favorite neighborhood of the old city between Piazza Navona and the Pantheon. I can almost smell the motorino fumes.

Life is a Road

I drew this for our Christmas card a few years ago. A brush and mars black on paper.

A Little Place in the Country

One of Winston Churchill's ancestors built this house to reward himself for winning a battle at a place called Blenheim. This was at a time when being a general could make you very rich. If you look at Eisenhower's modest house near Gettysburg you see that generaling has gotten less remunerative.

Blenheim Palace is larger than the house the Queen lives in. We visited Blenheim some years ago. The thing I remember is Winston's toy soldier collection which is displayed in a glass case in the hall. He was born there because his mother happened to be visiting at the time. Winston's people were poor relations. He wrote bestsellers for a living. He wasn't given huge sums or a palace for saving democracy. When he was P.M. he lived in a poky little house in a side street in Whitehall.

I classify people into two categories: cabin rich and cabin poor, depending on whether they have a place in the country. We do not have one, but I've been known to draw pictures in exchange for weekends. The Duke of Marlborough hasn't called to invite us yet.

June Sky

It's one of those perfect days in June and I moved my studio onto the screen porch for the morning. There have been some strange gyres and bumps this past week but today is quiet and pleasant and the clouds in the sky are the kind that don't worry anyone. Today is plain all right. I am busy drawing, waiting for the next big project, working on some writing I'd set aside, doing what I do well.

Countryside

One of my pencils of rural roads, with technicolor added.

Kid Suburbia

This is a drawing I did for one version of a children's story I wrote a few years ago. I don't usually depict the landscape with deep perspective like this. My compositions tend to be flat––all subject, no background, no context––so this was a departure. Even when I am in a realistic mode, with perspective and everything, I tend to imagine the drawing rather than working from reference. This filtering subtracts extraneous material and adds the quirks and oddities that make the art personal. This is probably as photographic as I get, but the light is flat and the background is blank. It's the suburbia I remember from years ago, a bit like the world Charles Schulz depicted.

Toscano

A drawing from my Italian sketchbook of a few years ago.

Suburbia Illustrated

I grew up in suburbia. (Pause to allow murmur of shock and opprobrium to subside.) I hasten to add that it was different then. Less privileged, more innocent, and considerably smaller. My sketchbooks since then contain suburban imagery as a kind of leitmotif, a journey with destination, the destination being either the countryside or the city. The city neighborhood I live in today resembles a suburb of two or three generations ago, which may be why I love it. Houses midcentury and older. (Ours is circa 1900 and was built as a lake cottage.) This drawing is part of a series I've been working on for some time for an editor of children's books at Farrar Straus. Maybe I'm trying to rediscover my childhood. It's what we all do. If I can I'd like to describe those remembered voyages by car, preferably without text because the drawings are the story. One page will leave off where the next one picks up and the child will follow along with his finger, scrutinizing, as I did, the variety of domestic landscapes along the way.

Absolutely Meaningless

Just a drawing, nothing more. Sometimes the arrangement of shapes and details gives me an idea for another drawing. I did get an idea this morning from this but plan to let it sit for a while, look at it and think about it and come back to it later.

Hair Topiary

With hair topiary I may have invented a new style, a new vogue. Time will tell. For a few years I have been working on a series about hair. I wrote a children's story about hair. In A BOOK OF AGES it forms a leitmotif––when Hitler grew his moustache, when Steve Martin went gray, when Darwin grew his beard, when Hemingway's turned white like Santa Claus's. When he was a child Mike Nichols lost all his hair because of a short, acute illness, including his eyebrows; he's had eyebrow toupees throughout adulthood. I do not go into the topic of merkins, but perhaps that is next.

Rural Landscape

I did this for my favorite aunt yesterday. Since I was a kid I've been a deep observer of the rural landscape. I've depicted it with small penwork and fat brushstrokes, fine and loose black line and more recently with pencil. I am not immune to influences. Edward Bawden, Eric Ravillious, Thomas Hart Benton, Wanda Gag, Garth Williams, Andrew Wyeth and others. This one is a bit more Matisse than Currie or Grant Wood.

A Snowy Street in Minneapolis

Funny, I can remember what I was listening to on the radio when I was drawing this. Thirty years ago I was in the Christmas card business, drawing, publishing, packaging and selling my own card line via department stores and gift shops. I can't remember where this street is though. Someplace in Kenwood, I think. Near Lake of the Isles. My parents still prefer my art from this period. I was a completely different artist then.

Gulliver

I was writing a story about a boy who grows suddenly large and the problems he encounters. Problem One is something Clifford (the big red dog) doesn't have to deal with. Clothes. This kid has outgrown everything and is very hard to shop for. The style is more dry brush than most of my work, and a rare excursion into nightscape. Most of my art places figures against a white background, so this was a fun departure. One of a series.

A Beautiful Day

Another one of those dry, pleasant, quiet Minnesota days.

Blue Sky Day

This is the kind of day it is in Minnesota. Can't get much nicer.