Vicky White worked as a zookeeper for six years and went on to study illustration at Blackpool and the Fylde School of Art.
In 2008 she was chosen as one of Bookrtust's Best New Illustrators. Ape is her debut children’s book.
You worked as a zookeeper before studying illustration. What prompted this career change?
I’ve always really enjoyed being creative and making things but I’ve also always been extremely interested in the natural sciences. I fell into zookeeping after a spell of A-Level work experience.I just got hooked and stayed on - I loved it.
It was my sister who stumbled across the Natural History and Scientific Illustration degree at the Blackpool and Fylde School of Art while she was looking to study photography there. I had to think long and hard about it when she told me, but in the end I felt it was too good an opportunity to miss. The course was amazing- it lived up to all my expectations and allowed me to finally bring together everything I’m passionate about. But I think the change was less a leap than a step sideways.
Studying and spending time around animals is still central to my work and I wouldn’t trade those six years for anything- they gave me a fantastic grounding in animal behaviour and biology and have much to do with the way I now see the world and our own place in it.
Your work is extremely detailed and almost photographic in style. Whose artistic techniques have particularly interested you?
It’s very important to me that the animals in my drawings and paintings retain a sense of realism and come across as individuals in their own right, so I often tend to find myself drawn more to the work of those who paint people when I’m looking for inspiration.
I’ve always loved the work of the Old Masters; Rembrandt, Velázquez and Caravaggio in particular, and I can lose hours pouring over Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings. One contemporary animal painter that I’ve long admired is Raymond Harris-Ching; stumbling across his work for the first time was another pivotal moment during my time as a zookeeper. More recently I’ve discovered the work of Paul Emsley- his dark, brooding large scale drawings of animals are unbelievably powerful.
I love Rien Poortvliet’s books, Dogs and The Ark; the sense that he really knows and empathises with his subject matter pours out of every page. And since I’ve started working within children’s book illustration I’ve found myself hugely inspired by the work of Robert Ingpen and Shaun Tan.
Ape ends with a message promoting conservation. Is this an issue that is important to you and will it appear in your future projects?
It’s very important to me- it’s a major driving force behind what I do, along with the compulsion to make pictures. To view the extinction of a species as a regrettable but remote event is to dangerously underestimate the ecological knock-on effects that will sooner or later catch up with all of us.
If we want to ensure a future for our own species we simply can’t afford to carry on undermining the ecosystems upon which we depend. Furthermore, there’s no universal law stating that other living things have any less right to exist than we do. Young children are invariably, and unashamedly, fascinated by animals. But all too often this respect and wonderment is lost as they grow up and they’re encouraged to develop more ‘mature’ interests and concerns.
In this respect, I think ‘growing up’ is highly over-rated; I still relish the spine-tingling thrill I get when, for example, I’ve been lucky enough to come face to face with a sloth bear, or wander through the midst of a troop of gelada baboons, or sit and watch the sun go down while a fearless young Barbary macaque messes with my bootlaces… moments like these, opportunities to immerse yourself in nature and tune into a sense of kinship with other creatures, are what I live for.
But they also make you painfully aware of how desolate a place the world would be without them, and what it really means to lose them forever.
In Ape you illustrate a non-fiction text by Martin Jenkins. Have you thought about writing your own stories or venturing into fiction?
Ape was a real team effort from its very conception. Both Martin and I are fascinated by primates - they’d been appearing in my work for years and Martin has worked with them too (he’s a biologist as well as a children’s book author).
Prior to Ape, I was working as an artist, rather than an illustrator, and what illustration I had done had been geared more towards an adult audience. I found myself in the Walker Books offices more by accident than by design, but when (editors) Lucy Ingrams and Ben Norland saw my portfolio they put the two of us together and the whole thing grew from there. It was a complete labour of love and a fantastic learning curve for me.
I think that writing for children is a huge challenge and requires great finesse, there’s such a fine line between too little information and too much. I also love working as part of a team- the rest of the time I’m making work alone so it’s really refreshing to be part of a joint endeavour.
We’ve just started working on a second book, which is really exciting. The experience has opened up a whole new world to me, and introduced me to all sorts of new influences and ideas. It’s definitely a place I want to explore further- who knows what will develop as I find my feet.
What does being chosen as one of the Big Picture’s Best New Illustrators mean to you?
I feel that I’m coming to children’s book illustration from a very oblique angle, so to have Ape acknowledged by the Big Picture campaign like this came as a bolt out of the blue- it’s fantastic to have that kind of support and encouragement. I’m still trying to get used to occasional glimpses of Ape in bookstores!
The whole experience has really opened my eyes to the broader contexts in which I might make pictures in the future…
