Alex Leeds — Artist Side Project assignment
Artist’s name: Beatrix Potter
The year it was created: 1904
Medium: watercolor
Edition size: 8x11 (?)
Price (if available): National Trust Fund
The reason you like it: I really love and admire Beatrix Potter’s illustrations because they show the simplicity and softness of the wilderness. They show how nature is beautiful and comfortable, but also has a lot of life, expression and emotion. It combines wild and free with homey, cozy and gentle. It gives the viewer a place of home, while also describing with her visual language in detail of what the animal’s lives were like outside of their homes. The atmosphere of her drawings are very realistic and show a lot of attention to detail of the natural world; I love the details in the vegetables and fruits, flowers, other plant life and even insects. I also very much love the animals are shown a little like humans, wearing little clothes and doing daily activities, taking care of their children and family, and doing things together. It’s interesting how they actually hop and run around on two legs like humans. However at certain moments in her books (example: Peter Rabbit), they can run or walk around on four legs like their species naturally does. This makes them a sort of hybrid between human and animal. I also love the importance of family and friendship in her stories, in terms of the plot but also in the drawings, which show these things pretty clearly in the way that they were drawn. You can see the expressions on the animal’s faces will be similar to the way that they are described in the writing as well.
