In an interview, Oliver Jeffers explains that when he started making picture books, he started asking questions instead of telling stories. His children’s book “The Day the Crayons Came Home” has been on the NY Times Bestseller list for 30 weeks and counting. Topped by his book “The Day the Crayons Quit,” which has hit the list for 142 straight weeks (and counting).   If you are reading any of his books, then make sure to visit his website with free activities and printables. And keep a look out for his newest book in September. But before he was winning award after award for his children’s books, he was making paintings in Belfast (and now Brooklyn).

 

Oliver Jeffers begins his Dipped Paintings by making a detailed portrait of someone who has suffered loss. He paints it alone in his studio, no one has seen it, and there are no photographs of it. Then at exclusive performances, he dips them into a vat of enamel paint. Only the people present witness the full portraits. There is no record of the artist’s hand capturing it just so or getting it just right.

The mystery created from the sacrifice of the perfectly painted portrait is alluring. Something is gained through the loss. That logic seems obvious and fruitful in the series of Dipped Paintings. But it is hard to imagine good when it doesn’t seem present. I wonder when my children experience their first deep sense of grief, in a way that destroys their vision and rocks their world, if they will believe that something can be gained by a loss. Knowing how to encounter art is knowing how to feel the beauty of loss in a way that reminds you to make beauty when you feel loss.

In a Times Magazine article, Jeffer’s own experience of the Dipped Painting performances is described like this:

“Jeffers has found meaning in losing his own work, which exists on levels both profound and nearly comical. While creating one of his recently dipped portraits, Jeffers managed to do an exceptional job recreating the subject’s hand. “I chuckled to myself. I just painted the best hand I’ve ever painted and then I realized, ‘Ha! It’s going to go away,’” he said. “It’s a metaphor for life. It’s liberating. I’m happier than I’ve ever been doing this.”

 

If you want to learn more about Oliver Jeffer’s paintings, the book “Neither Here Nor There” documents a full range of his work.