R. Gregory Christie: Painting Outside the Lines
By Jessica Rae Patton, Associate Editor

"If you have a positive mindset, and you really believe something can happen... you never know where things can lead." (A quote by R. Gregory Christie, the artist in front of an original painting titled The Lesson, his first large-scale work in oil, which has been exhibited in Los Angeles, London and Stockholm.

What struck us immediately when visiting R. Gregory Christie's live-work space in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, was its spare and singular focus on his artwork. The walls were decorated exclusively with his paintings, many of which were original illustrations from his books. The two adjoined main rooms housed art supplies among the most minimal of personal effects. There was an artist's easel, a small table and one folding chair. A plastic storage bin did double duty as his seat during our visit. He has a computer with which to maintain his website (www.gas-art.com) and catalog his artwork, and a small stereo but no television. It was as distraction-free an environment as we've ever been in, and said so much about R. Gregory Christie's dedication to his career. It also spoke of his sense of wanderlust. With few possessions to tether him, and a freelancer's self-created schedule, he spends several months of the year traveling within the United States (for school visits, children's art workshops and other work commitments) and abroad.

Have paint, will travel. R. Gregory Christie (the "R" stands for Richard but he's always gone by Gregory, or Greg) grew up in New Jersey and felt the travel bug even as a small child. "It's just something inside of me that said, ‘You have to go somewhere else and see something else,'" he told us. As an introverted kid, art was a crucial outlet, a form of creative expression and means of communicating. "My whole focus was drawing and painting," he said. "Ever since I was very young, that's what I knew I wanted to do."

Exuberant illustrations - A sampling of one of the children's book characters R. Gregory Christie has painted into life.

His first stop after high school was New York, which was geographically close but felt worlds away from his hometown. He attended the School of Visual Arts and simultaneously acquired a second arts education through his job as a security guard at the Guggenheim Museum. After college he toured Europe and has traveled extensively ever since, settling for periods of time in Germany, Sweden, Amsterdam, Malaysia and Australia.

When asked how traveling has influenced his artwork, Greg spoke not so much about the inspiration of different locations, but about the mindset being on the road creates. "It's like every day is a gift. When I was younger I lived in the future. I used to think, 'Oh, when I get to New York…' I wasn't even living in the present time period," he said. "But when I'm traveling, I wake up and I'm totally present in each new day. I find the simplified lifestyle of traveling really productive; I've done quite a few of the children's books overseas."

When opportunity knocks. In art and in life, R. Gregory Christie's philosophy is to follow every chance that presents itself as far as it will take him. This willingness to employ unorthodox means of self-promotion and to say "yes" to unconventional offers have taken him far, indeed – from a shy childhood spent immersed in his artwork to opportunities to be an artist in residence in London and Malaysia.

While in college, Greg set up his easel and painted at clubs and parties. He loved meeting a myriad of people and creating art in an unexpected setting. He met a band for which he secured his first commercial art job illustrating a CD cover; an arts patron he got to know during this time invited him years later to spend two weeks on Australia's privately owned Double Island. "I've never lived like that in my life!" Greg laughed. "So, you never know how far something will go. If you have a positive mindset, and if you really believe something can happen, you never know where things can lead."

"In my school visits I try to show kids a bit more of the world, through history in my books and through slides of kids I've met in different countries."

Paintings in print. Greg always knew he'd make his living as an artist, but that children's books would become his primary vehicle for getting his artwork out into the world was a surprise. (He's also a regular contributor to magazines including The New Yorker, he continues to illustrate CD covers and he exhibits and sells his paintings.)

While working at the Guggenheim, Greg was hired by Lee & Low Books to illustrate his first children's title, The Palm of My Heart: Poetry by African American Children, edited by Davida Adedjouma (1997). Greg's signature style, which he describes as somewhere between realism and abstraction, garnered him the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Award (an award he also received in 2001 for Only Passing Through: The Story of Sojourner Truth (Knopf, 2000) and in 2006 for Brothers in Hope: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan by Mary Williams [Lee & Low, 2005]).

Greg paints faces that blossom with expression. They perch upon elongated necks; limbs are not rendered to proportion, but rather retract or extend as is called for in the text or mood of a passage. For example, throughout Stars in the Darkness by Barbara Joosse (Chronicle, 2002), in which a mother and son grapple with the gang culture in their neighborhood, Mama's arms are painted thick, soft and wide, forming a comforting semicircle embrace for her son.

Gateway to history. Greg has illustrated books about the Rosenwald schools, a movement that enabled African American communities to build schools in the 1920s and 1930s (Dear Mr. Rosenwald by Carole Boston Weatherford [Scholastic, 2006]); author Richard Wright's quest for access to the library in the segregated South (Richard Wright and the Library Card by William Miller [Lee & Low Books, 1997]); and several biographies, including poet Langston Hughes and abolitionist Sojourner Truth. "People might think, 'This subject is too dark, it isn't appropriate for kids books.' But these stories can be the gateway for a child to want to learn more about his or her own culture. History is not always a happy story. There can be a lot of pain in it, but there's triumph in every book I do."

Uplifting visits. Greg loves going to schools and works one-on-one with teachers to tailor each visit. "I want the kids to think critically, ask questions and be inspired," he said. Kids respond favorably to his illustrations, "but I try to get them to tell me they don't like them," he laughed. "I want kids to look at the paintings and to go deeper than just repeating what I'm saying.

"When I'm speaking to a child, I think, 'That may be me, back then.' And I felt weird when I was a kid! But I realized as I got older that you don't have to always do what everyone else is doing, and you can find a way to make things work for yourself. You've got to be really positive, and you've got to accept the negative, too. Sometimes you deal with darker moments and all that, but you can find an outlet - a positive outlet - for it. For me, that was art, and I love sharing that with students."