Giselle Potter Art for Sale at Auction

Giselle Potter is an editorial and book illustrator who has created artwork for over 25 books, including some that she both wrote and illustrated. She is a brilliant visual storyteller whose bright, childlike paintings (with occasional collage) mix hints of folk art with rich textures and nuanced meanings. Her most recent books include Tell Me What to Dream About and This is My Dollhouse. Potter says about her favorite illustrators, “They all have a heartfelt, inspired, free, handmade quality to their work.” That’s also a perfect description of her own work. Potter got her start in editorial illustration with a series of assignments for The New Yorker. She continues to work for many publications, most notably The New York Times.

MY LIFE:
It’s not surprising that I became an artist because I grew up surrounded by a family of artists. I spent a lot of time in my grandfather’s studio, where he let me add to his abstract paintings and music. When I was three, my parents started a puppet theater company called “The Mystic Paper Beasts” and my sister and I traveled and performed with them throughout the United States and Europe. My drawings and illustrated journals from my travel and experiences with the Beasts inspire me still, and led to my children’s books The Year I Didn’t Go To School and Chloe’s Birthday..and Me.

I graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 1994 and spent my last year in Rome with RISD’s European Honors Program. Chronicle Books then published Lucy’s Eyes and Margaret’s Dragon: Lives of the Virgin Saints, a book of saint paintings and stories I made while I was in Rome.

After moving to Brooklyn, I got my first freelance illustration job with The New Yorker. My New Yorker illustrations inspired a lucky chain of work with many magazines and children’s books. I have been working as an illustrator for 20 years now. I live with my husband and two daughters in Rosendale, NY.

MY WORKSPACE:
I have a studio on our property that we built about 12 years ago.

It is my own little space that is separate from our house and daily life with no distractions (except sometimes my computer). I have pictures that I think might inspire me on the walls and I always appreciate the view from my window of a field and little mountain.

HOW I MAKE MY ILLUSTRATIONS:
I usually sketch things out with pencil and then paint with either Dr. Martin watercolor or gouache and sometimes collage.

MY FIRST BIG BREAK:
I was very lucky because right after I graduated from RISD, I did some illustrations for The New Yorker, and that started my career immediately.

I had moved to Brooklyn, thinking I would stay for a few months, work in a café and bring my portfolio around to see if I could get work as an illustrator. In those days The New Yorker had a drop off and pick up day. It was raining when I went to pick up my portfolio and I had dyed my dress blue and all the blue dye was running down my legs but I assumed I wouldn’t ever meet anyone in person, so I didn’t care. To my surprise, Owen Phillips, an art director at that time, came out and sat with me and ended up buying pictures right out of my portfolio box for the magazine. For some reason I had real paintings in my portfolio instead of copies… probably not a great idea but it worked to my advantage. He called me pretty regularly after that to do illustrations for the “Goings on About Town” section. It was a dreamy job to be sent to dance, theater, music performances and movies and to make pictures of them. Other art directors contacted me just from seeing my New Yorker illustrations and then children’s book editor Anne Schwartz offered me my first manuscript and I have been working with her ever since.