Michael Foreman | |
|---|---|
| Born | 21 March 1938 Pakefield, Suffolk, England |
| Occupation | Author and illustrator |
| Notable awards |
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Michael Foreman OBE (born 21 March 1938) is a British author and illustrator, one of the best-known and most prolific creators of children's books.[1] He won the 1982 and 1989 Kate Greenaway Medals for British children's book illustration and he was a runner-up five times.[2]
For his contribution as a children's illustrator he was UK nominee in 1988 and again in 2010 for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest recognition available to creators of children's books.[3][4]
Foreman was born and grew up in Pakefield, near Lowestoft, Suffolk, where his mother kept the village shop.[5][6] His father died a month before he was born.[7] When he was three, the family home was hit by a German bomb, but he survived along with his mother and two older brothers.[8] He studied at Lowestoft School of Art, and later in London at the Royal College of Art,[9] where he won a scholarship to the United States.
Foreman was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2022 Birthday Honours for services to literature.[10]
Foreman learned to respond instantly to text as an art student.[11] Having drawn for the newspapers and for the police, drawing female suspects when Identikit only catered for men, he gained valuable drawing experience. A travel scholarship took him all around the world, drawing landscapes, architecture and wildlife. Although many of his books feature luminous watercolours, it is the drawing that he sees as vital: "It's all in the drawing and illustration. It's a question of creating another world, believable in its own right. I think I was very lucky to have started art school so young when they actually taught Art. It was a rigorous training – not just painting and drawing from life – but hours of anatomy and perspective. ... it really taught you to understand what you were looking at."[11] His aim in illustration is to make the worlds created believable, real: "I keep trying to make things more real, not in a literal photographic sense, but in an emotional sense, telling a story by capturing the essence of the situation, giving it some meaning."[11]
