Kadir Nelson took a back road to book illustration; now, he's booked up with work

'I always knew I wanted to be an artist'

INTO VIEW

ARTIST: Kadir Nelson

FAVORED MEDIA: oil paintings, gouache and watercolor.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS: “Ellington Was Not a Street: Children's Book Illustrations by Kadir Nelson,” Fort Wayne Museum of Art (2005-2006), “Honoring Heroes in History: Illustrations From Coretta Scott King Award Books, 2001-2005,” Chicago Art Institute (currently on view).

KEY COMMENT: “I'm fortunate to work on the books I have. I don't worry about the next book.”
WEB SITE: www.kadirnelson.com.

By Robert L. Pincus
ART CRITIC

The San Diego Union Tribune
Sunday, April 9, 2006

Seven years ago, the well-known choreographer and actress Debbie Allen had a proposal for emerging artist Kadir Nelson: Would he like to illustrate a children's book she had written? He agreed – and in the ensuing years has enjoyed a fortunate fate in this field.
He had come to Allen's attention because of his work for DreamWorks as a pre-production artist, first on Steven Spielberg's “Amistad” and then on the animated feature “Spirit.” His charge was to draw and paint images that would supply the look and style of a film.
But that job had ended. And, as he admits, “I didn't have anything to fall back on at the time.”
Now, more than a dozen books later, it seem as if the right career found the 31-year-old artist at the right time. Nelson has twice been recognized with a Coretta Scott King Award, which lauds African-American illustrators who heighten the appreciation of African or African-American culture. (He was recognized in 2001 for his images in “Thunder Rose,” a tall tale of a story by Jerdine Nolen set in the Old West, and in 2005 for his graceful interpretation of “Ellington Was Not a Street,” a 1983 poem by Ntozake Shange.)
Nelson, whose family came to San Diego from Atlantic City when he was 10, has lived here ever since, except for the four years in the 1990s he was in Brooklyn, earning a degree at the Pratt Art Institute. He enrolled on an architecture scholarship, after graduating from Crawford High School. But immediately, he changed his major to illustration. When he returned after graduation in 1996, he married his high school girlfriend.
His formal art instruction actually began at age 11. Nelson learned drawing from his uncle, artist Michael Morris, and art instructor Sandra Buck. By 16, Nelson was learning how to use oils.
“I always knew I wanted to be an artist.” Nelson says.
As an illustrator, he is a meticulous realist. On the shelves in Nelson's San Carlos area home are books by some of the illustrators and artists that have influenced him: Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth, Gordon Parks and Charles White.
In a series of striking paintings about baseball players from the historic Negro Leagues, however, he takes liberties that other realists might not. These figures seem to tower over their world. One canvas, “Willie Foster and Young Fans,” has become the signature image in a nationally touring exhibition from the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo., “Shades of Greatness,” now headed for the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. It stopped at Balboa Park's Hall of Champions in 2004 (where Nelson's large-scale painting of Ted Williams is a long-term fixture).
A couple of other paintings in the Negro Leagues series are in the Nelsons' living room. But a photograph of their daughters, now 5 and 9, gets an equally prominent spot. An unfinished picture in his studio will be in a book on the boyhood baseball pursuits of Michael Jordan. It's to be a sequel to “Salt in His Shoes” (2000), a biography of Jordan's earliest basketball days as told by the storied athlete's mother and sister.
Nelson's own passion for sports and history converge in a book on the Negro Leagues, which is set to appear in 2007. But he's already thinking about what his next personal project might be.
“One thing I'm very interested in is Africans in Europe, the story of slavery in Europe. I'd like to explore doing a story about that.”
Hard to tell when he might find time to pursue this passion. He's currently committed to book projects (at least two a year) through 2011. But you won't find him complaining.

Robert L. Pincus: (619) 293-1831; robert.pincus@uniontrib.com