Maira Kalman-Illustrator

I was browsing TED talks today at work while I was finishing up marking and getting some things together in my room, and I came across this talk by Maira Kalman. The pictures posted today are her images. Maira Kalman is an Illustrator who works out of the states. She is most known for her illustration work with the New Yorker, the Elements of Style, and for illustrating various children's books. To me she is familiar because on more than one occasion I have considered buying her book "Principles of Uncertainty," which began as a weekly visual column for the online New Yorker. She has a kind of run-on personal style that combines writing with paintings. She tells stories in such a way that makes you wonder if they are real or if they are all made up, or only party based on something true and silly and maybe wonderful or maybe just ordinary. She tells her stories with colour and writing that makes me believe that it is at least a little bit wonderful, just because it's coming from a her very unique perspective.

Her conceptualizations and story telling are the kind that I want to do, if I could only figure out what stories I want to describe. The paintings themselves have a sort of modern Chagall-meets-Matisse-combined-with-German-expressionists-and-hand-written text feel to them. She has recently been working on another visual column about Democracy called the Pursuit of happiness through the New Yorker, which has also been published into a book.

Check out her New Yorker Blog/Column here: www.kalman.blogs.nytimes.com

The ted Talks video with her talking about her work is here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/maira_kalman_the_illustrated_woman.html


I kind of want to be her when I grow up, or at least maybe have her career.