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From nonsense to lessons learned, these forty five rhymes include the very well known (Itsy Bitsy Spider) and the somewhat familiar, (Hickety, Pickety, my black hen). The truly fantastic pictures speak more than one thousands words in details as artist Scott Gustafson riffs in paint on themes present and imagined in each verse.
Nursery rhymes are classic and so are some of artist’s interpretations but other paintings are surprises, like an anthropomorphic baking bear, a pelican sea captain and Peter Piper as a pug on two legs. Welcome to a world where “There Was a Crooked Man” is not about a hunched-back elder but rather a madcap, double-jointed dandy who might be “crooked” in more ways than one. Jack (Be Nimble) is a leaping cricket and Yankee Doodle a fun-loving chipmunk on a full-sized horse.
Scott Gustafson’s unique style, influenced by legendary book illustrators Arthur Rackham and N.C. Wyeth, makes this a volume to be treasured by children and illustrated book lovers of all ages.
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Storytelling through pictures has always held a certain fascination for Scott
Gustafson; be they the moving images in animated cartoons, or the epic
illustrations of N. C. Wyeth. Upon entering the Chicago Academy of Fine Art,
Scott was 99% sure that he wanted to become an animator, but it was that 1%
that ultimately drew him more and more into the world of stretched canvas and
oil paint. "As an animator, "Gustafson says, "your contribution to a given
film is, by necessity, limited to whatever character you've been assigned. But
as an illustrator, you're responsible for locations, sets, costumes, props,
lighting and character designs, not to mention the overall mood and emotion of
a given painting. It's about the best job there is."
Over the nearly twenty-five years that span his career, he has had the
opportunity to fulfill commissions for a number of varied clients and
publishers such as Celestial Seasonings, Playboy magazine, Saturday Evening
Post, The Bradford Exchange, DreamWorks and The Greenwich Workshop. His
illustrated books include The Night Before Christmas, Peter Pan, Nutcracker,
as well as two original titles, Animal Orchestra and Alphabet Soup. His newest
release, Classic Fairy Tales, was recently awarded a Chesley award for best
interior book illustrations from the Association of Science Fiction and
Fantasy Artists and is currently in its third printing.
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