FULL FOCUS | KPBS SAN DIEGO (2005-06-21) San Diego Artist Kadir Nelson is the winner of the 2005 Coretta Scott King Award which is handed out every year to an outstanding African American illustrator and an author. While Kadir Nelson grew up here in San Diego, his work is recognized around the world. Reporter Karen Rostodha has more.

Some people discover and embrace their destiny early in life. Kadir Nelson is one of those people.

Kadir Nelson: "Well I've always known really. I honestly remember being in diapers, pretty much feeling, knowing that I was an artist."

Nelson's interest in art came from an uncle and was nurtured by his family. After graduating from Crawford High School he headed to study at the Pratt Institute in New York on an architecture scholarship.

Nelson: "So some people said that I should become an architect. Use my drawing ability for that. And I thought well maybe that's right maybe I should become an architect to be able to pay the bills and then do my art on the side. It's not really what I wanted to do."

Especially when he discovered that a friend on his college basketball team was pursuing his own dream of becoming an artist.

Nelson: "And the next day, I changed my major to illustration and you know the rest is, not history, but I never looked back."

And 1996 was certainly the year he began to move ahead.

Nelson: "Two weeks after I graduated, I married my high school sweetheart and while we were on out honeymoon I got a few calls, one from sports illustrated, they had a big article that they wanted me to illustrate and the other message on the machine was about the movie Amistad, they were looking for African-American artists to illustrate parts of the the script for Amistad. So needless to say, when I got home I was doing flips. I got myself together and called Sports Illustrated back, and called DreamWorks back and got started on my career as being an artist."

Working as a conceptual artist for Amistad he illustrated scenes that would later be recreated in the movie.

Nelson: "Stephen Spielberg was not really sold on doing Amistad. So they brought us in to illustrate the middle passage, to help Stephen find his own vision."

Nelson's vision and talent also caught the attention of Actress Director Debbie Allen who tapped the artist to illustrate the children's book "Brothers of the Knight.

Nelson: "Well one of the great things that I found out about children's books is that it's the child's introduction to art..

To date he has illustrated more than a dozen books working with celebrity artists like Will and Jada Smith, Spike and Tonya Lee and Michael Jordan's mother and sister.

Karen Rostodha (on camera): "Where do you get your images are these people you know I mean she looks a little bit like a composite of both your daughters?"

Nelson: "She certainly does, a lot of the images in the books are this way, but I don't use reference, I don't use any photos."

Nelson relies on his mind's eye unless he's recreating real people, like his paintings of Negro League Baseball Players that have been featured in Sports Illustrated, and in the traveling art exhibit.. His vibrant and massive paintings are collected by celebrities like Denzel Washington Queen Latifah and Debbie Allen.

Nelson: "This painting is called humility and it happened because I was driving up the coast to Los Angeles, around the Camp Pendleton area and I looked over at the ocean and it just struck me as beautiful it just had this really blue line across the horizon, really thin faded blue line, and I just said Wow I'd like to paint that one day. And that's really what the ocean does for people, is gives them peace and that's what this painting is about, finding peace and finding God within yourself."

Nelson is currently working on a book on the Negro League as both the author and illustrator. While working on another book with Spike and Tonya Lee.

Nelson: "And then a few commissions for the Padres, some large paintings, and just more books a lot of books lined up."

Nelson has done what most artists only dream of achieving success as both a commercial and fine artist.

Nelson: "I always say that good art is good art for whatever purpose is created. I find that when you're doing an illustration, it’s always for someone else, when you're doing a piece of fine art it's usually for yourself or it should be. So I find when I work for myself, it charges me up in that I'm able to do artwork for other individuals, because if you're just doing art for someone else then you're not really learning from it, you're not really growing as a result of doing that art."
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