“Even when I was little, I loved books and drawing,” says illustrator and author Amy June Barrett Bates (BFA’97), who also took bookmaking classes while at BYU. “I loved how words and pictures interact, and how words can say one thing and images another, and how they play with and undermine or bounce between each other.” Loving beauty and humor, she plays with this dynamic in her art. “It’s so good for kids to laugh, not take things so seriously,…and have a mind open to this world.”
Bates sees children’s books as an introduction to art, literature, and “a world of space that you visit.” Books like Leaf and Lawson’s Ferdinand, Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen, and Brown and Hurd’s Goodnight Moon transported her as a child.
Bates works mostly in watercolor and gouache, but she likes experimenting with other paint media. “I love the drawing part. There’s all this potential….I get deep art dreams, and there’s this ‘anything is possible’ kind of a feeling,” she says.
“I want people to respond to my art with curiosity,” Bates adds. “I don’t want it overworked….An illustration needs a little bit unsaid.”
