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MEET DEBORAH NOURSE LATTIMORE
by Bonnie O'Brian

What did you most like to do when you were a child?

Deborah Nourse Lattimore

Draw, Draw, Draw. I was raised by my grandparents. I painted with my grandmother every day after lunch. We drew in the garden; we drew in museums. Everything about ancient peoples interested me and I’ve always felt more at home with them than with modern people. If I ran out of paper, I drew on the wall in our dancing patio behind a large Mexican tapestry. I drew chariot races, mummies, friends, and family all dressed up. I started doodling on that wall when I was about four.

What was your first job?

No one told me how to get a job as an artist. I just went to places where artists seemed to work and asked for a job. I worked for several companies as an artist for several years, and spent evenings doing what I really wanted to do: illustrating books. After many attempts on my own, I took a class with Diane Goode, a children’s book illustrator, and began to understand how books were made.

Where do you get your ideas from?

I get my ideas mostly from associations I make with people, objects, places, or smells (newly made soap, smoke in a fireplace, and perfumes); I look at; listen to, or breathe something and let my thoughts drift away, sometimes far away. My mind is a time machine. An idea’s always lingering. Museums get me going. I love paintings, murals, statues, small art objects, well anything ancient.

Where do you work?

My studio is a small converted garage behind my house, with industrial-looking, eight-foot long light bulbs. Drawings and notes are pinned up all over. Prints from my books decorate the walls alone with art done by my children, Nicholas and Isabel. The walls also contain silly cartoons sent by friends, a photo of a brilliant cellist named Jacqueline du Pre and an old photo of the actor Laurence Olivier. Hubba, hubba! By the way, I play the cello for fun and relaxation. I have a drafting table, and things roll off of it frequently. So I am often picking up pencils and other things from the floor. Speaking of the floor, I often do my painting on my hands and knees with the canvas spread out upon the floor.

What do you enjoy drawing the most?

Whatever I am working on at the time. I love variety, so I approach each book as if I’d never drawn before or used certain color combinations. I also have a definite interest in the ancient world. What I crave most about it is the sense of mystery the modern world seems to lack. Seeing something in a book or museum that is hundreds or thousand of years old, I love it immediately. It has lure; it has secrets. Can I, a person of this century, discover those secrets? I want to explore them, draw them, write stories about them. I try to weave tantalizing pieces of the past together, always aware that some pieces can never be found. That excites me.

What do you use to make your pictures?

Pencils, gouache, watercolor, and inks. I’ve printed backgrounds with cut potatoes, sea sponges, and even finger paint. I research to find the earliest information on a subject that I can. I’ve translated hieroglyphs, studied Egyptology, created pages to look like ancient papyrus, and I drew the Irish monastery of Kells for THE SAILOR WHO CAPTURED THE SEA using the original plans, which I found at the UCLA Research Library.