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Nov. 11, 2011
An artful prism of perspective
Rae Maté’s whimsical book illustrations have emotional sincerity.
OLGA LIVSHIN
An artist needs a particular mindset to illustrate children’s books. Rae Maté does it beautifully. Her inner child must be lurking just beneath the surface, smiling mischievously at grownups, laughing at their inability to see the magic just out of reach. “I haven’t forgotten how to be two or three years old,” she admitted to the Independent. “I’m excited by the same things they are.”
Maté’s solo show, Picture This! Children’s Book Illustrations and Paintings, is showing at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery until Dec. 4. The show includes Maté’s original paintings for three children’s books she has illustrated in recent years: Crocodiles Say ... and Crocodiles Play!, both by Robert Heidbreder, and Pussycat, Pussycat, Where Have You Been? by Dan Bar-el. The Zack show includes the artist’s other paintings, as well, all of them unified by the theme of animals; specifically, crocodiles and cats.
She began painting crocodiles and cats years ago, as a metaphor for human emotion. “People can look at them and recognize themselves,” she said. “It’s easier to show strong emotions on a cat’s or a crocodile’s face than on a human face. Intense emotions wouldn’t work with human faces, might look exaggerated, but animals can broadcast their emotions.”
The need for emotional sincerity has always been paramount for the artist, ever since she was a little girl. “I have a strong memory of being young and afraid,” she said. “I put my heart into art, and it protects me. It protects me from being alone. It connects me to the truth.”
Maté’s artistic truth grows from her subconscious. “I don’t know what will happen when I start a painting,” she explained of her creative process. “I start with a doodle…. Then I work on a painting, and it’s a relationship, a conversation. The painting speaks to me. You don’t dominate such conversations, you can’t force them. You have to be honest, and honesty comes easier to me expressed through animals than through humans.”
The characters in Maté’s visual menagerie are acutely honest, despite their appearance of animated toys. They always project their true feelings. Their affection, humor and vivacity give the impression of the gallery as playground, a joyful world seen through a happy child’s eyes. The cats are curious and contemplative. The crocodiles predictably misbehave, frolicking like bright pieces of a kaleidoscopic jigsaw puzzle.
“My crocodiles began as scary,” Maté said of her earlier paintings. “In those paintings, little girls tamed them with love…. Crocodiles are all about appetite. In my latest paintings, their appetite is no longer wild or destructive. Now, they have an appetite for hugs, flowers and ice cream…. These paintings, they channel what I love.”
Infused with the artist’s affection, the images of the show are radiant, dazzling in their rainbow color. The pictures seem simple, deceptively primitive even, but when one looks closer, one can see the multiple layers of meaning. The surface layer is for the preschoolers, who are drawn to the stories that stir their fantasy: crocodiles have a sleepover party or play hockey, cats travel to exotic locations. The artist invites her viewers to enter the paintings, to participate, just like she does as a teacher at Arts Umbrella, where she has taught for several years.
“I love teaching,” she said. “I’m inspired by my little art students. They’re two and three years old, not self-conscious yet. Everything is play for them. It’s all about the process, not the end product.”
But there are deeper layers in Maté’s pictures, too, and each new layer is revealed as her audience matures. The depth is especially pronounced in her illustrations for the Pussycat book. As the cat travels around the world, preschoolers are arrested by the bright and fanciful places he visits, but their parents can also see the innermost journey of the soul, its search for a place to belong. “It’s a hero’s journey and a love story. It’s the cat’s odyssey,” said the artist. “The cat is soulful. He is traveling, and the girl is waiting at home and listening to his tales. Her lantern lights his way, so he can find home.”
As always, when she worked on the illustrations for Pussycat, she started with the writer’s words and tried to make them visual. In this case, Bar-el’s verses, as well as the classic tales she has adored since childhood, inspired her to explore the universe through the prism of the feline perspective. The moon has a cat’s face, with its long whiskers aquiver, and cat spirits dance in a desert, like a whimsical Fata Morgana, designed for cats’ eyes only.
The artist dedicated this show to her biggest fans: her mother and her late father, who passed away in May of this year. “He loved his visits to the Zack Gallery,” she said. “His playful spirit is very much alive in these paintings. You can see his big eyes and wonderful smile in the crocodile paintings. His frequent question to me was: ‘Why don’t you show your work here? You should have a show here!’ Now, here I am, Dad. And here is the show.”
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
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