The Color of the Word interview with Briony Stewart, Söyleşi, Şevval BAŞTAN

Interview by Şevval Baştan

You are a unique artist who can both write and illustrate your books. What creative liberties does this afford you? Furthermore, when you work with other writers, how do you balance your ideas and theirs to create a cohesive final product?

When I am illustrating books that I have written, it does give me a little more time to develop the concepts for the illustrations before I begin them. I don't have to ask anybody if I want to change the text to accommodate something I want to do with the artwork. But sometimes it is also trickier because I am also having to reimagine the story I already have in my head to make sure the illustrations are also adding something of their own to the narrative.

I love the challenge of illustrating for other writers. I don't see it as balancing their ideas and mine, I see it as me trying to fully understand and appreciate their ideas and all the different things that can be drawn out of those ideas and represented visually. I think if I have understood another writer's meanings, and connected to them personally, then the final product will be cohesive.

Do you recall your initial drawings from childhood? Have you kept them with you? This inquiry is meaningful to me because numerous artistic creations children make are discarded before they even reach adulthood. I consider each of them to be a source of inspiration. As a mother and an artist, do you hold onto your children's artwork?

I loved drawing when I was a child, and I drew a lot. My parents kept a lot of these drawings for me and now I seem to have become the keeper of them. When I look at art I made as a kid it takes me back to the time that I made them and I always remember something I had forgotten. I do keep a lot of things my kids make. My husband would like to keep everything! But I only keep 3 kinds of things: Things that are beautiful. Things that show the development of a skill, things that show who my children are, their personality and how they think at a given point in time.

Does your choice of the garden as the location for "Here in the Garden" have a special meaning? Did you use the garden as a metaphor?

I think gardens are always a metaphor for life and for the spaces we create to collect and grow the things that are important to us. But the idea for this story did come from a literal garden. I had a pet rabbit who was an amazing pet. She liked to sit on the back step of my house and I would have to open the back door to the garden and leave the door open for her all day, no matter the weather. She would come and go between the garden and my studio all day. Before owning this rabbit, I was always in my studio, I wasn't much of a gardener. But once she was there I had to learn about plants (which ones weren't safe for rabbits to eat), and I would go out and work in the garden to keep her company. Because I opened the door every day and sat beside my rabbit on the steps, I came to appreciate the changes in the seasons, I came to love being in the garden. When my pet died I would open the back door and realize I had no longer a reason to leave the door open every day, except that now I liked the garden. It was a gift for which I was profoundly grateful. I could still start my morning on the back steps enjoying the garden, and I could visit my memories anytime I needed to. Those memories lived in my heart – another kind of garden.

These days the garden also reminds me of my grandmother who recently passed away. She loved gardening so much, that I can't look at a nice plant without thinking of her. So she's in the garden now too.

Your books are read in many countries. Do you worry that what you want to say in your books may not be fully conveyed in translations?

Not really! I think books are always a collaboration. We have to trust publishers and agents, we have to trust designers and co-creators. We have to trust that everyone involved just wants the same thing – to make a great book for children. I think translators are a bit like illustrators, trying to understand the meaning and feeling of a writer's text and interpreting it so that it captures that in the best way possible for the audience they know will read it. Translations are always exciting, and I am always grateful when they happen.

You often meet with your little readers. What do they say about your books? What makes them happiest? Have you ever encountered little reviewers?

Very small children I meet are often quite shy when they meet me, even if their parent tells me they have read the book 1000 times. I think young kids also don't think or care much about who made the book they are enjoying, and that's fine with me. When they do talk to me, they enjoy telling me about the things that made them laugh, and they like to tell me that they liked the pictures. Older kids, reading some of my longer stories, have questions. I love these of course, because it's very satisfying to answer really specific questions about the things that go on in my imagination.

I am sure that you have countless new heroes, book ideas, and projects in your mind. But how do you choose among them and prioritize one of them? How do you decide that the idea is good and the timing is right?

There are so many ideas! I'm chipping away at different ideas all the time. Sometimes one idea seems to come together all of a sudden and you know exactly what it should be and can polish it and pitch it to a publisher. But prioritization of projects is usually about what's practical – what do I have the capacity to make at that point in time? For me, this is constantly changing as my children get older. (They are now 6 and 8). I also pay close attention to what books are coming out. I don't write to meet gaps in the market but if I already have an idea and I can see a timeliness or room for it in the market that also bumps it up the list of ideas. Deciding if the idea is good or not is tricky. It's subjective of course, but I think that after a long time in the industry you do get a sense of what is good. At least, something that is potentially good enough to be published. But of course that doesn't always mean it will be! Often 'the next thing' I end up working on is the thing that found a publisher who wanted it!

Your book "Here in the Garden" deeply impacted me. After finishing, I noticed a photo of you with a cute rabbit on the back. Can you tell me about your process of writing this book?

This book started as a poem I wrote when I was processing a loss. It was at once the realization that life has its seasons, and is as ephemeral as anything else. I also realized fort he first time that when you lose a person or pet you love, most of the sad and angry feelings get easier with time but the sense of missing only grows with time. The silver lining of missing someone though is thinking about them, enjoying the memories that you do have. Those you can keep forever and visit whenever you want. After I wrote this poem I thought that adults aren't the only ones that experience loss, children do too. I thought that maybe children needed this idea as much as I did at the time.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, many artists and writers found inspiration despite the challenges. How did that time affect you and your work?

My children were 2 and 4 in 2020. It was much harder to be part of a 'village' in raising children as it was harder to see people and help with childcare was unreliable. It was very hard to find time to work, and of course, it was a scary time to be a parent, trying to protect your children from the sense of fear around a global crisis. How to explain to them why every playground was closed, or why I didn't want them to come with me to do the grocery shopping? At the same time, where I live we were comparatively very lucky.

While it was harder for me to work during the pandemic, it did bring in to focus for me the need to focus on the hopeful things. Two books I worked on at the time reflect this. One is called 'Accidentally Kelly Street' and its about communities that welcome refugees, and another was called "The Garden At The End of the World", written by Cassie Polemeni about the Global Seed Vault on Svalbard in Norway. I think both of these books focus on the people who are helping when things in the World go wrong.

Do you believe that picture books can help children develop an artistic perspective? As an artist, how would you enhance your illustrations to achieve this goal? What are the features that make you in this field?

I think picture books are children's very first experiences of literature and visual art. When the literature and the art is good, you create a future generation of readers and people who appreciate visual art and design. So I do think Picture books help enormously in helping to develop and artistic perspective.

From an artistic perspective, I guess the only thing I do to achieve this goal is to make picture books that don't underestimate children. And while the books are focused primarily on the child's experience, to remember that adults usually read them to children. If you can make something that anyone can enjoy at any age then you have made something universal.

I've noticed that digital illustrators often lose touch with traditional mediums like pen and paper. What is your approach to traditional styles and materials?

I will always love using traditional mediums. I think they help you make mistakes that make your work unique. But I like to combine these with digital techniques too, where it will help me to speed up some processes.