It’s always very important to me to do as much research as possible. And a lot of that research does generally involve going to the place where the story has happened. For Waterhouse Hawkins I got to go to London and I got to go to the Crystal Palace Park in Sydenham which is where the dinosaurs that he built are still standing, and I got special permission to go onto the island where the dinosaurs are because it’s set up like a zoo so they’re surrounded by a moat.
The viewers are supposed to look across the moat so that they’re not in danger from the dinosaurs. I got permission to go onto the island and I got to climb into the dinosaurs and look out the dinosaur’s mouth and see where Waterhouse Hawkins had signed his name. And so I was very aware of the smells of it and the feel of it and the essence of that place. I can’t say there’s a one-to-one relationship between being there and what happens in the drawings themselves, but I do know that when I get home and it’s time for me to do those drawings, I feel more authentic.
I’m able to think as I’m working, “I was there. I touched this. I know what this feels like. There was grass like this and the sky was like this and there were people here. And it had a special and specific feeling.” I remember when I was in college, I had a really great art teacher who always encouraged me to really think about how things felt and not just how they looked but really what they were feeling like. And so that means to me both physically, but also emotionally.
