Tom Feelings |
About Tom Feelings
An Interview with Tom Feelings
More About Tom Feelings
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"When I am asked what kind of work I do, my answer is that I am a
storyteller in picture form, who tries to reflect and interpret the
lives and experiences of the people who gave me life. When I am asked
who I am, I say I am an African who was born in America. Both answers
connect me specifically with my past and present...therefore I bring to
my art a quality which is rooted in the culture of Africa...and expanded
by the experience of being black in America. I use the vehicle of 'fine
art' and 'illustration' as a viable expression of form, yet striving
always to do this from an African perspective, an African world view,
and above all to tell the African story; this is my content. The
struggle to create artwork, as well as to live creatively under any
conditions and survive (like my ancestors), embodies my particular
heritage in America."
Born in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New
York, Tom Feelings attended the George Westinghouse Vocational High
School where he majored in Art. After graduation, he received a
scholarship to the Cartoonists' and Illustrators' School which he
attended for two years. Joining the Air Force in 1953, he was stationed
in London, England, where he worked in the graphics division of the
Third Air Force as a staff artist. From 1959 until 1964 he worked as a
freelance artist while attending The School of Visual Arts in New York.
During this freelance period, his primary subjects were drawn from the
African American people of his community. He traveled to the South in
1961 to draw the people of black rural communities and some of these
drawings were published in Look magazine as part of a feature
entitled "The Negro in the U.S." In 1964, he traveled
to Ghana, where he spent two years working both as an illustrator for
the African Review Magazine and for Ghana's government
publishing house, teaching illustration. Returning to the United States
in 1966, he continued to concentrate on illustrating books with African
and African-American themes. Julius Lester's To Be A Slave,
published by Dial and illustrated by Mr. Feelings, was chosen as a 1969
Newbery Honor Book -- the first time a black author received this award.
From 1971 to 1974, Mr. Feelings lived in Guyana, South America, working
as a teacher and consultant for the Ministry of Education, training
young artists in textbook illustration.Tom Feelings has received
numerous awards for his art in books. In 1972, he was the first African
American artist to win a Caldecott Honor Award for
Moja Means One: A Swahili Counting Book and in 1975 he
won a second Caldecott Honor Award for Jambo Means Hello: A
Swahili Alphabet Book, both written by Muriel Feelings.
Jambo Means Hello also won the prestigious Bienale
Illustrations Bratislava Award and received a nomination for the
American Book Award in 1982. Something On My Mind won
the Coretta Scott King Award in 1978, and in 1994 he won his second
Coretta Scott King Award for Soul Looks Back In Wonder.
For
Daydreamers, with poems by Eloise Greenfield, he
received a Coretta Scott King Honor Award. Mr. Feelings also
illustrated Now Sheba Sings The Song, written by Maya
Angelou. The School of Visual Arts in New York recognized him with its
Outstanding Achievement Award in 1974. He has received eight
Certificates of Merit from the Society of Illustrators, and the National
Endowment for the Arts awarded him a Visual Artists Fellowship Grant in
1982. Collectors such as
Maya Angelou, Roberta Flack and Cicely Tyson have paintings by Mr.
Feelings in their private collections.
In the mid-ninties Mr. Feelings moved to Columbia, South Carolina where he taught art at the University of South Carolina. It was during that time he published perhaps his best known work, The Middle Passage, a powerful depiction of the slave trade, which won the 1996 Coretta Scott King Award. Mr. Feelings was working on finishing his last picture book, I Saw Your Face, a collaboration with the poet Kwame Dawes, not long before his death in 2003.
Books illustrated by Tom Feelings
Soul Looks Back In Wonder
After completing the stunning art for Soul Looks Back in
Wonder, Tom Feelings approached stellar authors Maya Angelou,
Margaret Walker, Walter Dean Myers, Lucille Clifton, Haki R. Madhubuti,
and Eugene B. Redmond, among others. They wrote poems by Feelings's art
to pass on the heritage of strength, beauty, and creativity to today's
African Americans -- especially young people. (ISBN: 0-8037-1001-1,
$15.99, 1993)Daydreamers
by
Eloise Greenfield
Poetry and portraits of young black
children reveal all the beauty in children's wishes, yearnings and
memories. (ISBN: 0-14-054624-3, $4.99, 1981)Now
Sheba Sings the Song
by Maya Angelou
"Striking in
its very simplicity, this celebration of black women, is suggested for
most high school and YA collections."
Booklist (ISBN: 0-452-27143-6, $11.95, 1987)
Moja Means One: A Swahili Counting Book
by Muriel
Feelings
"Primarily a Swahili counting book, Moja Means One
is also meant to be a gift of heritage, a glimpse at what is unique
about East Africa." School Library Journal
(ISBN:0-14-054662-6, $4.99, 1971)Jambo Means
Hello: A Swahili Alphabet Book
by Muriel Feelings
"The
beautiful vision of African life in the text merely hints of the
community breathtakingly captured in the illustrations...The space has
been filled with monumental figures that glorify the power and beauty of
man." The Horn Book (ISBN: 0-8037-4346-7, $15.99, 1971)Something On My Mind
by Nikki Grimes
"Prose
poems express the fear, hope, and yearning of black children in noted
illustrator Feelings's portraits with a one of sensitive realism that is
maintained throughout." School Library Journal (ISBN:
0-14-054705-3, $4.99, 1978)To Be a Slave
by Julius Lester
"Julius Lester has assembled from the words of
slaves and his own pointed but unobtrusive commentary one of the most
powerful documents to appear in children's literature." School
Library Journal (ISBN: 0-8037-8955-6, $15.99, 1968)
copyright © 2000 by Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved.
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