To be good, an artist must constantly fill their head with new ideas. Back when I started, this was done at the library. I lived in a small town with a branch library - part of a larger regional collection. When I was researching something I wasn’t familiar with, I would visit the library. The selection of books with decent picture reference material was tiny, and it took a lot of searching. When I came up empty, I would talk to the librarian, who would look up other related titles in the card system and then order the books from the main branch. In a week or so, I would return to see what she had found. I would pore through those volumes, looking for good reference pictures. It was a cumbersome and often unsatisfying way to find what I needed.
I also would visit local bookstores to gather information, although I couldn’t afford many books in those days. I was mostly a browser. I remember well my first major ‘acquisition’. The bookstore was near my place of employment, and through the window, I saw the book of my dreams. It was a richly bound, thick volume about the Disney Company and featured the animation art of many of their classics. The book cost a jaw-dropping two hundred dollars - a literal fortune back in the mid-1970s. Janis and I were broke newlyweds and couldn’t possibly afford that kind of extravagant luxury. But Janis saw me coveting this book through the window and took note. One day near Christmas, she snuck into the store and bought the book, asking them to keep it in the window, which I passed by every day - so I wouldn’t suspect anything. Christmas morning, Janis handed me this giant, heavy present, lovingly wrapped. She didn’t dare put it under the tree, for she knew I would instantly guess when I saw it - which I did. Through the next years, I wore that book out, reading, re-reading and studying all of the fabulous art within.
That beautiful book began a five-decade-long quest for more good art books. As I began to enjoy moderate success as a professional artist, I was allowed to add to my book collection. In the decades since, Janis encouraged me to collect hundreds of wonderful volumes. She kept the company financials and had a special category called ‘research’ with a generous budget that allowed me to amass these treasures over time. When I visited a bookstore, and I would drive miles out of my way to do so, I would quickly flip through a new book that had caught my eye. If, in those few seconds of flipping the pages, I saw two or three great images, I would put the book on my buy pile and keep searching. When I reached my budget amount, which Janis had set, I would take them to the counter to purchase them. Those books would be read and reread many times before my next trip to town. The vast book collection now covers over a hundred lineal feet of shelves in our studio library. Years later, if I need some inspiration, I can go to my library and, with a little searching, find the image I remember well from reading and studying these volumes.
Although I don’t avidly collect as many volumes for the library as I used to, I still search for new books when the opportunity presents itself. That considerable investment has inspired thousands of projects. Collecting these books was well worth the effort, and they still make me smile.
