The Spirit Place

Abstract

The Spirit Place Barbara Cooney (Editor's note: Because of a technical error, the tapes of Barbara Cooney's slide presentation in Charlotte could not be transcribed. Ms. Cooney graciously agreed to lend us her notes for the presentation, and to prepare this version of them.) The first twenty years of my life I spent growing up. The next twenty years I was busy getting married and having children, staying home and taking care of my family, and decorating books. I drew what was near at hand—children—over and over again. Children—and animals. It sometimes seemed that the number of jobs offered was in direct proportion to the quality of the fur I drew. In those years, landscape in my pictures was usually incidental. I saw the world in color but I had to work in black-and-white—not from choice but because that is most economical for publishers. I used to yearn for color, but without much luck. One editor told me I had no color sense whatsoever. The little color I was now and then allowed was always in the form of overlays, which, for me, are awkward, certainly tiresome, and, worst of all, unspontaneous. Besides, I did not have confidence in my ability to capture the moods of landscapes. There was one exception, though; for a book called Peter's Long Walk by Lee Kingman I put my heart and soul into trying to capture a certain time, place, and mood: early spring in New England. I spent days in the woods with a sketch book and a fishing rod, and sometimes one of the children and a picnic. These pictures are awkward, not particularly wonderful, but my heart was in them. It was not until I was in my forties, in the fifth decade of my life, that the sense of place, the spirit of place, became of paramount importance to me. It was then that I began my travels, that I discovered, through photography, the quality of light, and that that I gradually became able to paint the mood of places. Earlier, while working on Chaucer's story of Chanticleer and the Fox, I had stayed home and studied the middle ages through books and old manuscripts and pictures in museums. But when I began to work on the story of The Little Juggler, also set in the medieval period, I went to France to see what it was like, to see the places where the little juggler might have wandered. In the book, I showed actual scenes of Tours and Normandy. I was still restricted by black-and-white and overlays, but my travels had begun. And what unconsciously happened was that my characters began to be no longer isolated from their backgrounds. More and more they become part of the landscape, part of their environment. Perhaps a certain humility was born . . . . Click for larger view View full resolution Illustration from Spirit Child: A Story of the Nativity translated by John Bierhorst and illustrated by Barbara Cooney. © William Morrow and Company, 1984. Soon after, something else happened. Some of our publishers began issuing familiar tales translated into foreign languages-such as Winnie Ille Pu, Winnie the Pooh in Latin. When my editor suggested I work on a project of this sort, Mother Goose in French, I happily packed up my children and sailed for France. We rented a house on Lake Annecy, in the French Alps; I had Mother Hubbard keep her bones in an armoire like the ones where we kept our clothes in that house, and I sent Jack and Jill up the hill to fetch some edelweiss. I drew the castles and farmhouses we visited and the bakery where we got the croissants for our breakfast. I had such a good time making Mother Goose in French that I decided to do Mother Goose in Spanish. The Spanish Mother Goose, unlike the French one, is in acrylics, because of their strong and brilliant quality. I think of Spain as strong, often harsh, masculine, and of France as softer, more pastel, more feminine. In Spain, little Tommy Tittlemouse, now Tomasino Tinito, lived in his little house raising rice for...