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Ad Code: 4
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An example of work by John Clapp
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| Contemporary California artist John Clapp is best known as a teacher of drawing, and as an award-winning illustrator of children's' books.
A graduate of Art Center College of Design and their graduate illustration program, Clapp went on to receive a master's degree in illustration from Syracuse University. He teaches drawing and painting at San Jose State University, a university noted for its illustration program. He was also formerly an instructor at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco and the California College of Arts and Crafts.
Clapp became interested in art via comic books and cartooning. Eventually he discovered illustration and now divides his time between working on illustrating children's books and continuing to teach art at the college level. He is the illustrator of five books for children, including books written by Robin McKinley, Liz Rosenberg, and Bruce Coville. His latest book, Shining, by Julius Lester, is a Booksense 76 Pick and was selected for inclusion in the annual show representing the "Best Picture Book Art of 2003".
Some of the artists with whom he has studied, and who have inspired Clapp include: David Shannon, Joel Nakamura, Philip Hays, Ted Youngkin, Burne Hogarth, Dave Passalacqua, Murray Tinkelman, Gary Kelley, Anita Kunz, and other instructors at Art Center College of Design. He also expresses admiration for the work of: Lucien Freud, Odd Nerdrum, Tom Otterness, Dorothea Tanning, Joel Peter-Witkin, Andrew Wyeth, as well as historical artists such as Honore Daumier, Edgar Degas, Frank Duveneck, Child Hassam and others.
In an interview published on his website, Clapp shares how he got started in the illustration field: "I began my career doing book jackets, then Young Adult book jackets, and that brought my work to the attention of several children's book art directors. Since then, I've grown to like the genre more and more."
He goes on to comment on some of his inspiration for his artwork for the book 'Shining' by Julius Lester: "I was drawn to Chinese paintings of the "Lingnan School"-a group of 19th/20th century Chinese painters who mixed traditional Chinese painting techniques with Western representational ideas. While I don't think anyone would ever identify the artwork I created with these painters, it was thinking about their work that suggested the media to me."
(What appealed to Clapp about these paintings was) "It was their timeless quality. An untrained eye, looking at a Chinese painting is hard-pressed to say whether it was made twenty years ago, or a thousand years ago. A lot of this is simply their relative consistency of technique over that span of time, but technically, the way they work also communicates this feeling. The soft background gradations, the strong graphic elements, their use of silhouette, the powerful notes of single isolated colors used in opposition to a muted palette-all of these techniques help convey a kind of "archetypal" visual world-which is exactly what I was looking for."
Music also provides inspiration. For his work on illustrations for Shining Clapp states: "Peter Gabriel is one of my favorite musicians. On that particular soundtrack, he blends haunting, evocative, and primal sounds to create an incredibly compelling aural narrative-even without lyrics, you feel the rising and falling dramatic tension of the story. It also happens to be the exact emotional tone I was trying to hit with the artwork for the story. So as I was working I kept the soundtrack playing over and over in my studio as a kind of emotional touchstone for my work on the paintings. If a painting didn't feel like that, I knew it was headed in the wrong direction."
John and his wife Mary live in Livermore, near San Francisco, California.
Source:
website of Harcourt Books, as well as to the website johnclapp.com.
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