What Is An Illustrator Anyway?

Finding The Right Name For What I Actually Do

I have an uncomfortable relationship with the term “illustration” as a description of what I do. Similarly, when I compare myself to other artists who also call themselves illustrators, I see very different conceptualizations of what we think that means. Of course, today, we are all quite comfortable with loose definitions, especially in the art world, where its own subjective nature is really the only objective thing we can say about it.

Can you paint caricatures of political personalities as a form of social commentary? You are an illustrator. Do you create graphic visual metaphors using stylized shapes and solid blocks of colours? You, too, are an illustrator. Do you glue macaroni noodles on construction paper to “draw” cats? You get to be an illustrator too. Do you make bleep bloop sounds on a synthesizer and turn them into dots on a screen? Illustrator.

At least in the realm of commercial art, it used to be that illustration was more or less representational drawing or painting in service of advertising. The art of Norman Rockwell comes to mind.

In terms of kids’ picture books, I suppose there has always been more openness to experimentation and whimsy. I think of Alice and Martin Provensen, who were active within the same period as…