Illustrator and author Donovan Bixley's work on show at Lockett Gallery

Author and illustrator Donovan Bixley at his exhibition launch at Lockett Gallery on Sunday afternoon. Photo / Paul Brooks

Donovan Bixley's illustrative work is bold, colourful, imaginative, humorous, decorative, impressive, beautiful, ghastly and amazing. A selection of his work and books are now on show at Lockett Gallery in Guyton St, Whanganui, New Zealand's only art gallery for illustrators.

The exhibition's opening on Sunday, August 7, was packed with children and adults, all eager to buy from the available stock of Donovan Bixley books, cards and larger works, and to have them autographed by the artist and author himself.
The refreshment table might have been well stocked and well attended, but most of the attention was on Donovan and the vast array of his work on display.

After a time of mingling and public appreciation of the exhibition, chairs were arranged and filled, and Lockett Gallery's Lesley Stead introduced the guest of honour.
Donovan says this is his first visit to Whanganui since he was 18 and a sponsored windsurfer for Bombora, competing in Bruce Kendall's team. Living in Taupo, he would come to Castlecliff Beach where the water wasn't so flat and calm.
He thanked Lesley for the invitation and for Lockett Gallery.

"To have a gallery devoted to art illustration is unique: there is no other place like this in New Zealand ... I have never had an exhibition like this before. I have had my work exhibited around the world as parts of big book festivals and fairs, but not a show like this.
"I've always felt that the art form I create is picture books, and ever since I was a little kid I've been really interested in making books and making stories, and I've never seen myself as an artist. I've always been really interested and excited about some of my favourite parts of my books, parts where maybe there's a colour change, where it goes to night-time, or it goes to sunset, or maybe there's a reveal on a page, but that picture may not be very interesting to take out and stick on a wall ... so to find pictures that work as individual works of art can be quite difficult.
"This exhibition is a nice retrospective of my entire 25-year career as a children's book author and illustrator."

He says he has specialised in and devoted himself to the art of picture books, which he defines as quite narrow, but this exhibition, he says, covers quite a range of his work.
"From some of the first pictures I ever did ... my book on Mozart is the first book I ever tried to do ... to my latest work, the Flying Furballs, which is for a book that's not coming out until October. In between there have been close to 130 books published in 30 countries, translated into 20 languages."

Donovan grew up in Taupo and just loved drawing and making up stories.
His ambition was to create adult picture books on Mozart, Shakespeare and Leonardo da Vinci, which he accomplished.
"It took me six years to make that first book on Mozart." The book became a finalist in the adult section of the Montana Book Awards.
"That book was the cornerstone of my career because it has allowed me to ... have the freedom to do whatever I wanted to do."

He says it has been a struggle convincing people that picture books for adults are acceptable, but in Asia they are considered normal and his books are selling well there.

"It's quite a turnout," says Lesley Stead, earlier in the afternoon. "Kids obviously idolise him, so just the fact they're going to be able to meet him. They've been bringing their books from home for him to sign ... he's such a name."
Donovan Bixley's work will remain on show at Lockett Gallery until the end of September.