Monday 11 April 2011

Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver - The Wind Has Wings


These illustrations are all by Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver (1939–1985). They are taken from The Wind Has Wings - Poems from Canada (1969, Oxford University Press, Canadian Branch). The book is a compilation of various poems for children by some fifty Canadian poets. The book won the 1971 Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator's Award.

There's not great deal of information about Elizabeth on the internet. She produced illustrations for 13 children's books, and won six various Illustration related awards for her work, and sadly, died relatively young, aged just 45.

Many of the pages feature black/white woodcuts images, interspersed with full colour collage / cut paper images such as below. What makes them interesting, for me, is the extensive use of decalcomania, one of the techniques that surrealist artists Oscar Domínguez and Max Ernst were fond of using.













Further Information

Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver on Wikipedia
The Wind Has Wings on Amazon

Text © 2011 Gary Andrew Clarke
Illustrations © 1969 Oxford University Press / Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver

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