David mckee biography

For several years now, his painted work is regularly shown in solo exhibitions especially London. The artist now seeks to have his canvas being the sole subject of his painting. Artists and styles he encountered early on have inspired his personal use of lines and color. The bright colors of the Fauves and Matisse have influenced me greatly.

Into sketchbooks of the same size, so the artist records the feelings captured by the eye. David McKee's gaze, as his soul, is highly original, both humorous and deep. The artist has a great knowledge of art; his sensitivity leads him particularly to the drawing and he is an unconditional admirer of, among others, Pierre Bonnard and Vuillard. Tavistock , Devon , England.

Nice , France [ 2 ]. Early life [ edit ]. Writer and illustrator [ edit ]. Films and television [ edit ]. Personal life and honours [ edit ]. Death [ edit ]. Bibliography [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Retrieved 8 April The Guardian. Press release 27 March Retrieved Random House UK. Archived from the original on 13 April Retrieved 17 July In McKee published the first of his books for children, Bronto's Wings, the story of a dinosaur who yearns to fly so that he can join the migrating birds going south for the winter.

Writing in Growing Point, Margery Fisher noted that the "eccentric illustrations. Benn" series. In Mr. Benn, Red Knight, mild-mannered British banker Mr. Benn, who normally wears a conservative black suit topped by a black bowler hat, is transported back in time when he tries on a suit of armor at a costume shop. After rescuing a dragon and riding the beast triumphantly, Benn goes home to dream of more adventures.

A reviewer writing in the Junior Bookshelf called Mr. Benn, Red Knight "a most exciting and unusual book," while Gertrude B. Herman claimed in School Library Journal that McKee's "marvelously inventive illustrations" place him "firmly among modern English artists" such as Michael Wildsmith and John Burningham. Other books recounting the continuing adventures of Mr.

Benn, Gladiator. In Benn McKee describes how the banker finds himself in prison after trying on a convict's uniform. Noting the gloom of the prison and the sad state of its inmates, Mr. Benn solicits the help of head convict Smasher Lagru to transform the facility into a happier place using the prison's paint and the many skills of his fellow inmates.

Lanes noted that "the experience, wholly engrossing and humanizing, makes for a refreshingly novel tale," while a Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote that McKee's tale contains "such inspired silliness that it could brighten the viewpoint of the most pragmatic computerizer—it could even blow his mind. In Big Game Benn, our hero is transported to the African jungle after he tries on a hunter's clothes.

Posing as a guide, Benn thwarts a group of hunters by appealing to their vanity, having them exchange their guns for cameras. Writing in Growing Point, Margery Fisher called Big Game Benn "a comic statement about conservation" before concluding that McKee lightens his message with his "subtly teasing colour-range and odd perspectives and the offhand brilliance with which he suggests a jungle atmosphere.

In this story the colorful Elmer decides that he wants to be like the other elephants in his herd. When he dyes his multicolored patchwork grey, the other elephants don't recognize him; he also notices that they do not seem as cheerful now that he is without his colorful skin and jokes. After a rain storm washes off the dye, Elmer decides that he is happy in—and with—his own skin, and the other elephants declare a holiday.

A reviewer in Publishers Weekly noted that "McKee's gentle humor and love of irony are in full force in this celebration of individuality and laughter," while J. Cunliffe wrote in Children's Book News that McKee's colors "have the jostling brilliance of a fairground. The "Elmer" series, which has also been adapted as a television series airing in Great Britain, has continued to grow in the decades since it was first introduced, and includes such titles as Elmer Again, Elmer and the Lost Teddy Elmer and the Kangaroo, and Elmer and the Hippos.

In Elmer Again, Elmer paints all of the other elephants to look just like him, but then realizes the importance of individuality. Writing in the School Librarian, Carol Hill stated that "just to open this book is to be confronted with a kaleidoscope of shape and colour" and went on to predict that Elmer Again "is so delightful that it will be read again and again.

Elmer and the Kangaroo finds the little pachyderm on a rescue mission: to see what is distressing a kangaroo in the jungle. Learning that his new friend bounces but not jump, Elmer explains that there is little difference between bouncing and jumping, inspiring Kangaroo with enough confidence to enter the upcoming jumping contest.

David mckee biography

Another problem is neatly solved in Elmer and the Lost Teddy when the little elephant helps Baby Elephant track down a lost favorite toy. Noting the illustrations colored in "jelly bean hues," Booklist contributor Ilene Cooper wrote that "fans of the series will welcome Elmer's return. These works, which introduce language and other concepts, are noted for their humor and for the brightness of their pictures.

In a review of these titles in School Library Journal, Linda Wicher wrote that Elmer's Friends, "the most sophisticated of the four, leaves readers with the message that we can be different and still get along. By good-naturedly reinterpreting the definitions of these skills, Elmer proves the other animals wrong. In her review of what she described as a "cleverly crafted" moveable book, School Library Journal reviewer Lucy Rafael stated that McKee's "message is clear: anything is possible when one thinks positively.

The Magician Who Lost His Magic is the first of McKee's books about Melric, a magician who serves an impetuous, childish king and who learns lessons as he attempts to retain his job. Benn, King Rollo achieved additional popularity through the animated films and television shows created by McKee's studio, King Rollo Films. While his series books have proved immensely popular with younger children, McKee received much of his adult attention in response to a trio of individual titles he wrote in the late s and early s: Tusk Tusk, I Hate My Teddy Bear, and Not Now, Bernard.

In Tusk Tusk the author describes a time when the elephants of the world were either black or white. Hating each other for their color, the elephants fought each other to the death, except for a few pacifists from both groups who fled to the jungle; later, their peaceful descendants emerge as grey. The book ends on an ironic note: the grey elephants discover that they once again fall into two groups—those with little ears and those with big ears.

Writing in the Times Educational Supplement, Carolyn O'Grady praised the colors chosen for the book and added that McKee's "illustrations are especially ingenious: trunks become guns, revolvers, and hands to point an accusing finger. McConnell felt differently about Tusk Tusk, noting: "The moral is muddled as a final cameo shows elephants with medium ears clasping trunks.

Laski commented that this "is a dotty response to a book whose overriding impulse is passionately anti-war and With his lighthearted pen and watercolor illustrations, McKee spins a tale with a timely moral about the family of man in his picture book The Conquerors. In this book, two small children, Brenda and John, are sent outside while their mothers socialize over a cup of tea.

After leaving their "hated" bears—toys so familiar to the children that they have become boring—under a tree, they play a game of one-upsmanship, boasting that their teddies can do things like fly, sing, and count backwards. The bears carry on a conversation of their own, finally agreeing that they are equally talented. At the end of the story, the children carefully retrieve their bears, demonstrating, in the words of Margery Fisher of Growing Point, "all the time the happiest of alliances.

McKee's watercolor illustrations tell a separate story, however, depicting a background where adults move heavy loads of huge hands and feet and perform activities like palm-reading, painting, conjuring, and spying. The final illustration shows all the giant pieces being mounted as statues for a sculpture exhibition. Writing in the Times Educational Supplement, Naomi Lewis called I Hate My Teddy Bear "a most remarkable book" and "a brilliant foray into the surreal—or far more likely, a demonstration of the real: that the centre of any happening is never where we think.

The sense of dislocation and desolation is strong. This is a book for children? In Not Now, Bernard McKee features a child whose self-absorbed parents answer his every statement with the refrain of the title. Throughout the book, the boy's distracted parents never look at Bernard, not even when he tells them that there is a monster in their garden ready to eat him.

Not even after the monster devours Bernard and takes his place in the family do his parents change their response. At the end of the story, Bernard's mother puts the monster to bed in Bernard's room, despite the creature's claim that he is a monster. Kids love it. Even very young children see the joke and apparently couldn't care a jot about poor Bernard, transferring their affections immediately to the lovable gruesome monster.

As a picture book for infants, it doesn't. McKee defends the right of a picture book for children to be, as he told Laski, "another art medium. I really enjoy life and I know I enjoy it.