Sunday September 27, 2009

Striking, surreal and unsettling

By DAPHNE LEE

Shaun Tan uses words and pictures to convey complex themes.

MOST people tend to associate picture books with simple stories, illustrated with simple, brightly coloured pictures.

Of course, those with a more intimate knowledge of this medium of storytelling know that there is more to picture books than just pretty pictures that simply offer a visual description of a straightforward, basic text. Picture books may deal with complex and difficult themes and subject matter, and this may be reflected in either the text or the art, or both.

Shaun Tan (pic) is a picture book artist whose work is definitely more complex than what the average person might expect to find in a alphabet or counting book. The Melbourne-based 35-year-old started his career drawing for science fiction and horror novels. His art appears in picture books written by John Marsden (The Rabbits) and Gary Crew (The Viewer and Memorial) and he also draws for his own books (The Red Tree, The Arrival, Tales from Outer Suburbia).

Tan’s art is striking and detailed, rather surreal in content and style. The richly tinted, deeply unsettling images in The Red Tree manage to convey the idea of that small glimmer of hope that keeps many people going through the worst of times.

In The Arrival, the pictures are sepia-toned, alternating between panaromic views and personal studies that relate the story of a man as he attempts to make a living and home in a new land.

Tales from Outer Suburbia is a collection of 15 short ... I hesitate to even call them stories. Some seem like fragments that have no beginning or end. Most tantalise the reader, offering glimpses into strange worlds or strange views of this world.

Tan’s father hails from Ipoh, Perak, and met his Australian wife when he was an engineering student in an Australian university. Tan was born in Perth and had visited Malaysia as a boy, but he doesn’t remember much of it.

Apart from writing and painting, he has worked as a theatre designer. Tan did the concept art for the films Horton Hears a Who and Pixar’s Wall-E.

I’ve read your notes (on your website) about Tales from Outer Suburbia so I gather its starting point was your sketches. Did it ever happen the other way around – where a story gave birth to pictures?

Yes, although I usually begin with a vague mental image, like a “sketch”. Broken Toys was a visual idea about a man walking around in a diving suit on a still, hot day, in a park near a store or on someone’s driveway. I wrote the story before producing any particular drawings.

This is true also of another story (No Other Country), about an Italian family who discover a secret room in their house. A fuzzy visual impression leading to writing, then clearer images; the words guiding style, content and design.

Your work has a wistful air about it. There’s a lot of searching going on, and loneliness, not fitting in, and the feeling of being overwhelmed. There’s also a degree of wonder and anticipation. How much does all that have to do with your having a parent who emigrated to a new country and had to settle down there as an adult?

It’s hard to say because I’m not always aware of my motivations. Sometimes I look at my work and am a little surprised by their emotional colour.

I think the fact that my dad is Malaysian-Chinese and my mother Anglo-Australian has contributed to some sense of displacement, or at least I’m never quite sure where my real home – if there is such a thing – is located.

Growing up in a semi-developed outer suburb, a place with little history or identity, really compounds this. But I have to say that Dad settled in very well, quite early on – he’s very adaptable as long as he has a nice spot for gardening!

Where does the wistful searching/anxiety/wonder come from? I’m not sure, but some very deep place that even I can’t see clearly myself. A lot of people seem to connect very strongly with my stories, so it’s obviously not a unique or unusual feeling.

Will you enlarge on any of the stories in Outer Suburbia? For example, I would like to know what happened to the man whose property was destroyed by dogs’ pee. Are you ever kept up nights wondering about the fate of your characters?

Not at all. I really just see them as people or things that live entirely within a story, not outside of it. I like the idea of their mysteriousness too, that we never really know them very well.

Ultimately, every element in a story is a metaphor for something else in the real world, and there’s a more profound question: how does each thing relate to real life?

Do you travel much? If so, how much is your work influenced by the places you visit?

I do travel occasionally, and yes, that influences the way I think, draw and paint. I recently visited Mexico City for a book conference and was very influenced by the folk art there, both contemporary and pre-Columbian, the shapes, colours and surrealist elements.

When I returned I had to create a poster for children’s book week in Australia, and ended up painting a picture of kids reading books on top of a brightly-coloured Aztec-looking creature.

Have you ever thought of writing and illustrating a graphic novel?

Not much, actually, although it’s possible if the right subject came along, and I felt strongly enough about a certain graphic novel style. It’s such a demanding medium, not something I’d leap into.

Even The Arrival emerged by accident, in a way, from a much smaller picture book of only 32 pages that grew to 128 over a five-year period. Also, some stories are best left unillustrated. I feel it’s a medium that demands caution and restraint.

The Red Tree inspired new music. And images from The Arrival have been shown accompanied by music by Shostakovich. What is it about your art that inspires the use and incorporation of music?

I think it’s the silence actually, and the absence of a clear narrative, which allows for plenty of adaptation and intervention. Both these books are quite mirror-like, in the sense that readers can find their own ideas very easily reflected in them, much like music.

You have said that you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a child and that when you create, you create what interests you. How do you feel about being a celebrated children’s author and illustrator now?

I’m in two minds about it. Sometimes I feel it is a misconception brought about by my starting my working life as a picture book illustrator; if I’d been a political cartoonist or a “fine arts” painter, for instance, I’d be framed differently. (I have worked as both, just not so widely exhibited or published).

I don’t really understand why The Arrival is often called a children’s book. But I have no complaints, as children are a great audience – they feel and respond to things quite deeply.

What sort of books inspired you as a child and what inspires you now?

I was inspired by science fiction, fantasy and anything funny. I also liked stories that had unclear endings, or were slightly disturbing as I grew older. I read a lot of Ray Bradbury’s short stories as a young teenager.

These days I tend to read more mainstream literature, but often with a slightly speculative twist, such as the novels of Haruki Murakami (which are weird in a restrained way). I also remain inspired by good picture books, and also graphic novels and comics, which I did not read much as a child, only recently.

What, if anything, switches off your desire to create?

Occasional depression, which is the opposite of that creative drive really. Much more than that, though, I think any kind of stress or anxiety in other parts of life. I really need a quiet, uneventful space to think creatively, with plenty of time and no pressure to come up with anything good.

Who are your favourite artists and why?

There are too many. But what I can say is that I look for any artist, regardless of medium, genre or reputation, who is able to create something honest and with complete integrity, and come up with a visual language that is inseparable from whatever he is trying to express. The idea and its representation become the same thing.

If you could invite any artist living or dead on a date, who would it be?

A date? Well, it had better be my fiancee then, given that she is also an artist (graphic design, jewellery and illustration). Otherwise there’d be trouble!

Do you read picture books by other writers/illustrators? Any favourites?

Yes, more so than I did as a child (we owned very few). I like the work of Peter Sis, Edward Gorey, Chris Van Allsburg, Oliver Jeffers, J. Otto Siebold and Vivian Walsh, Lane Smith, Quentin Blake and Raymond Briggs.

Do you have a favourite story from Outer Suburbia?

If I had to choose one it would have to be No Other Country because I like the idea of a beautiful place to escape to amidst bleak and sterile surroundings.

I suppose my own “inner courtyard” is the simple act of drawing or writing. For me it’s really about pausing to reflect on things, to collect my thoughts and try to make connections between all the disjointed experiences that make up daily life, and to go beyond bleakness, too.

The “inner courtyard” is also a place you invent yourself in some way, it’s not automatically present: you have to invest and build.

I guess reading a book is like that too. It’s an effort of reflection, you get back what you put in.