Anne Pedersen (b. 1969) belongs to the generation of ”wild” young illustrators -
many of them former students at Kolding Designskole – who broke onto the
children’s books scene one after the other in rapid succession in the
mid-1990s. A generation raised on the mass media’s accelerating flood of
visual images, and well-versed in the
devices of imagery and its decoding. For them, it was not simply a matter
of illustrating. They regarded the pictures in picture books
as an art in their own right, one with a distinct and powerful impact.
Anne Pedersen graduated from Kolding’s Department of Visual
Communication in 1994 and scored a resounding success the following year with
her first book, Hr. Flugt går under
jorden (Mr. Getaway Goes Underground), which she also wrote. Even before its
publication in Denmark, in
the spring of 1995, Pedersen’s book had been presented at the Bologna
Children’s Book Fair by Danish publisher Ejnar Agertoft, and the rights sold to
a number of different countries. Later
that same year Anne Pedersen was awarded the Danish Ministry of Culture’s
Illustrator’s Prize for this same book – the first newcomer ever to be so
honoured. And deservedly so: Pedersen’s
first book is quite unique, both visually and textually, and astonishingly
mature. The book takes the form of a
gently satirical, topsy-turvy fantasy of freedom, in which, after a bungled
bank robbery, Mr. Getaway tries to dig his way out of Tremmerup Prison, only,
instead, to find himself embarking on a hilarious underground journey through
history. Among the people he meets are
a caveman, two card-playing Egyptian skeletons, a grape-tramping wine-grower
and the Devil himself. The journey ends
where it began, back at the prison, where - in a conclusion worthy of Denmark’s
own Hans Scherfig - a weary Mr. Getaway is seen sitting alongside another bank
robber, smiling happily and savouring the safety and comfort of prison, with no
more plans to escape.
So much for the
story. As to the pictures: in this, her
first book, Anne Pedersen employed a mixed media, each spread first being
covered with a layer of acrylic paint blended with black Indian ink and white
acrylic, which was then rubbed with a cloth to produce a grainy, earthy effect.
This has then been overlaid with patterns and delicate blocks of colour, using
pencils and acrylics. The resulting
contrast creates a striking effect that is followed through in the drawing of
the figures, with the rounded, fantastical humour offset by the wry, angular
features of the characters. This same
wry, oblique body language, one of the hallmarks of Pedersen’s early work, is
found in the illustrations for the alphabet book Tungebrækkerbetet
(Tongue-Twister-bet), published in 1996. That year also saw the publication of
Abu Kassims Tøfler (Abu Kassim’s
Slippers), written by Einar Agertoft and based on an old Arabian folk tale
about a miserly merchant, Abu Kassim, and his fondness for a pair of smelly old
slippers. Anne Pedersen drew
inspiration for the illustrations from a trip to Tunisia which has borne
exquisite fruit, both in the book’s recurring decorative motif and the richly detailed Oriental market scenes which, with their
constant shifts in perspective, provide an effective foil for the grotesquely
witty figure drawing and the melodramatic plot. The overall impression is one of
both strict control and quirky
abandon, produced with a palette much wider in range than in her first book.
In 1999 came Róbot (Robot),
in which, for the second time, Anne Pedersen provided both words and
pictures. Here we have a rather
old-fashioned, tragi-comic tale of a lonesome robot who turns a pile of spare
parts into what he believes will be the perfect lady robot. She, however, promptly
runs away with a dashing
sports-car, whereupon our broken-hearted hero goes to pieces and is thrown on
the scrapheap. Here, at last, he finds
a wife with a ”true spark-plug heart”. The penchant for piping, nuts, bolts and
cogs first encountered in Mr. Getaway Goes Underground is brought
to full fruition in this robot tale which, with its more serious tone and
softer colours presents us with another, more contemplative side of Anne
Pedersen’s work.
With its growing artistic maturity, Anne Pedersen’s illustrative work
to date has earned her a distinguished place among the ranks of those young
illustrators who have experimented with and expanded upon the art of the Danish
picture book, in an extension of the breakaway movement of the mid-1990s which
laid the foundations for the new Golden Age of Danish picture books.
In 2002 Anne Pedersen published the book Hr. Flugt går i Luften (Mr. Getaway Takes Off) continuing the story about Mr. Getaway from her debut book.
(2001)
