Acclaimed artist David Diaz has been an illustrator for more than fifteen years. His bold, stylized work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly and the Washington Post, among other national publications, and in works commissioned for diverse clients including American Express, Perrier, PepsiCo, and the European clothing manufacturer Benetton.
Although David Diaz completed his formal art education at an advertising and design school, he began developing the style of illustration used in the 1995 Randolph Caldecott Medal book Smoky Night during a trip down the Amazon in Brazil several years ago. His loose sketches from this trip inspired the photographic collages that frame the strong, richly colored acrylic paintings of his first picture book. Diaz created the collage backgrounds for Smoky Night from diverse materials such as small pieces of cloth, matches, corrugated cardboard, even fragments of his own pottery.
"The background textures all provide visual appeal, but some of them are obviously tied into the story, like the cereal spilled on the page that tells about the looting of Mrs. Kim's store," says the artist. These unconventional illustrations, praised by the chair of the 1995 Caldecott committee as "dramatic and groundbreaking," powerfully depict a family's strength and love in the shadow of urban violence.
Diaz created illustrations for children's books without curtailing his style in any way. "I approach it the same way I do a job for a corporate client or the way in which I work on a design project. There's no need to 'draw down' to a younger audience."
In addition to receiving the 1995 Caldecott Medal for Smoky Night, Diaz has garnered honors from Parents' Choice, American Illustration, Communication Arts, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and the New York Art Directors Club. David Diaz lives with his wife, daughter, and two sons in Rancho La Costa, California.
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