Vanessa Brantley Newton—I See You Part 1 [Eps 20]
Artists see the world differently, and yet, we desperately want to be seen and heard. Illustrator and storyteller Vanessa Brantley Newton's mission is to help children of all backgrounds know they are valued. Her work touches adults just as profoundly, and her story of harnessing dyslexia, synesthesia, and stuttering makes her a powerful advocate for those who feel invisible and out of place. She’s the artist of the month and you’re going to love Part 1 of our two-part interview.
What Vanessa has to say about her mission:
…If a little brown boy picked up a book or a little white girl picked up a book or if an Asian child picked up a book, they would go, ‘Wow, she saw me!’ And that’s why the work is what it is.
On struggle:
We don’t want to go through bad things but it’s not the good things that make us strong, it’s the worst things. It’s the things that break us.
On artistic process:
For me, sometimes the pictures come first, because I’m dyslexic, before the words do. And so I usually come up with the story in picture form. It starts with a character. The characters usually stay in my head and they start knocking literally, they start knocking on my frontal lobe like, “Hey, I wanna come out! I wanna be born! Can you draw me today?”
Other great stuff we talk about includes:
A childhood rich in diversity.
Tenderness and hardship as an African American child who wanted to be an artist in the 60's.
When loss helped her rediscover art.
How all sorts of people find themselves in her books.
How her characters talk to her.
Find Vanessa’s work and a reading of her beautiful children’s book Grandma's Purse at her website VanessaBrantleyNewton.com.
Vanessa is also on Instagram and Facebook.
Here’s Part 1 of this interview.
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