Graham Percy (and me) Part II

Here are some of the things I am thinking:

1. Peter Campbell suggests that the roots of Graham Percy’s style can be seen in the work of Heath Robinson. Robinson was an English cartoonist and illustrator working in the first half of the 20^th century, and according to Wikipedia, “he is best known for drawings of eccentric machines and "Heath Robinson" has entered the language as a description of any unnecessarily complex and implausible contraption.” Apparently, “Graham Percy had the same predilection for neat, even lines, well worked out architectural detail and chubby people.” (Campbell)
   
2. Campbell describes some of Percy’s best work as his animal drawings, saying that Percy was “happiest” with these: “elephants in particular suited the three-dimensional solidity he gave his characters.”
   
3. Imagined Histories, like many of the larger works in the Gus Fisher vault, are in black and white. Peter Campbell suggests Percy “wanted to get the sweetness of children’s book illustration out of his mouth for a while.” Some of the large works at Gus Fisher, in particular a series called the Alchemical Allotment, felt quite dark. Campbell: “the price for being willing and able to please may have been to cut off a potential creative stream.”
   
4. Bookman Beattie’s blog mentions that Percy had been working on a book with Hamish Keith (at the time of Percy’s death this was still in development stages). It was called Stories of the Inflatable Boy and several of the illustrations are to feature in the exhibition. I have seen them. O’Brien describes them as “evok[ing] darker, far more traumatic aspects of childhood.” Example: The drummer boy notices a Zeppelin approaching in the Night Sky. The title conveys a fear, as does the darkness of the illustration.
   
5. Percy’s MA at the Royal College included a thesis on the relationship between typography and food. I think this is great. Included in the thesis is criticism for the typeface used on Love Hearts candy – he suggests they demanded “a much more vigorous or whimsical letter form that the discreet sans serif.” This is from O’Brien’s chapter.
   
6. I like the parallel O’Brien draws between the Shakespearean dreams of Graham’s birthplace, Stratford, and Kiwi Ophelia illustration. O’Brien describes the Kiwi series as being “a part of a marvellously inventive, anarchic commentary on the national psyche.”
   
7. A favourite work: The young Modigliani, having brought his very first art book. I like the look on Modigliani’s face, and the French poster design. Typical of Percy’s titles for his works.
   
8. Notable works (children’s book projects): ‘Sam Pig’ stories by Alison Uttley, Gerald Durrell’s The Fantastic Flying Journey and a 1991 edition of The Wind in the Willows.
9. O’Brien: Percy’s “ongoing conversation with childhood.”
10. Although he began as a painter, Percy switched to design during his time at Elam. This “may well have been the result of a burgeoning interest in typography, which had been nurtured by the handpainter Bob Lowry back in Auckland." Bob Lowry was Auckland's best-known printer from the late 1940s to the early 1960s.
    
11. Hugo the Hippo was a smash hit in Russia but never released in North America. It now has cult status (thanks, youtube).
    
12. Despite his work on Hugo and experimentation with new technologies, “working with pencil or pen on paper remained at the centre of Graham’s practice.” Percy described his satisfaction with drawing as a medium (as being different from painting, for example), and states “I find a strong link between drawing and storytelling.” (O’Brien)
13. O’Brien’s article for Art New Zealand explores a theme of negotiating space in Percy’s work. As a personal friend, O’Brien describes Percy as an excellent tour guide, and says, “Graham Percy could offer a similarly insightful tour of unreal spaces.” O’Brien cites Arthouse as an example of this, conveying “Graham’s interest in imaginary as well as real structures.”
14. With its rich range of references, Arthouse seems to describe Percy’s inspirations and his ideas about his own practice. O’Brien describes it as “a kind of self-portrait of the artist, the room in the book echoing the influences in his artistic consciousness.”
    
15. I was immediately drawn to Percy’s titles for his works. The first one I saw in my diggings at Gus Fisher (at this stage, quite ignorant about Graham Percy’s work) was Franz Schubert emerges from a stream near to Crear with a trout he has caught. This, along with the five watching rabbits, has given him the idea for a quintet (1819). The relationship between image and text here is fascinating: you almost don’t need to view the work to understand its essence. There are many others as eloquently named.
    
16. Another book in the pipeline at the time of his death seems to have been the one to include all the Kiwi images. I think this series may have the widest appeal of Percy’s ‘adult’ illustrations, especially in terms of this exhibition. They are both immediately amusing and interesting, while making potentially complex statements about New Zealand, art, and our national identity.
    
17. It interests me that Percy should be occupied with thoughts of New Zealand almost 40 years after he departed for London. It is clear that he still considered himself to be a New Zealand artist. See The New Zealand Artist Abroad.
    
18. Due to his being based in Great Britain since the 1960s, the early part of Percy’s career seems to be the most recognised here: largely due to recent publications A Nest of Singing Birds; 100 years of the school journal by Greg O’Brien and Cover Up – The art of the New Zealand book cover by Hamish Thompson. O’Brien: “These recent books offer, I believe, a compelling case for Graham Percy and his near contemporary Jill McDonald (1927-82) as representing a high point in the history of book illustration in this country.”
    
19. About a wonderful quote from Wynstan Curnow: "Graham Percy was a
 remarkable New Zealander whose sense of the visual while largely
 channelled into his long and internationally successful career as an 
illustrator of children's books was all encompassing and deeply 
knowledgeable. This is evident enough in his own art projects, but it 
informs everything he did. Percy possessed a native humanism, which he
 laced with humour. The freshness of feeling with which he imbued 
the conventions he worked with and the art that he made, relied on an
 original and highly nuanced sense of comedy which ranged from the
 gentle and subtly understated to the satirical and the wickedly witty."