Apr
25
The Curse of Hackdom
Late last year I interviewed Iku Dekune, a Japanese picture book creator who lives and works in Prague in the Czech Republic. I'm a great admirer of her work. She told me that she studied as a graphic designer, began working as a painter and then later began adapting her painting style towards children's books, thus it appears she's cycled through practically the whole gamut of 2-D visual arts.
Seeing the smooth transition of Dekune's large expressive painted gallery works to the powerful images in her picture books made me realise how different the culture and education behind Japanese picture books is from, say the UK or USA. This is work by someone who's as much an "artist" as they are an "illustrator", in fact there's little division between the two.
Seeing the smooth transition of Dekune's large expressive painted gallery works to the powerful images in her picture books made me realise how different the culture and education behind Japanese picture books is from, say the UK or USA. This is work by someone who's as much an "artist" as they are an "illustrator", in fact there's little division between the two.