‘Hope is the thing with Feathers and Wings’ – Erica Wagner – bid is at $300

Erica Wagner

Melbourne/ Narrm, unceded land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation.

Erica Wagner is an artist, publisher, and much loved creative consultant to storytellers, and recently she has illustrated ‘Hope is the Thing’ written by Johanna Bell.
This was awarded the 2024 CBCA New Illustrator Award and the book was also was the winner of the Picture Fiction category of the 2024 Wilderness Society Environment Awards for Children’s Literature.

For over three decades, Erica edited and published many ground-breaking and award-winning books for children and young adults, working for Penguin Books Australia, Allen & Unwin and co-founding Twelve Panels Press.

Passionate about illustrated storytelling in particular, Erica co-facilitated the inaugural Octopus Story Camp for Top End writers and artists in 2019 with Johanna Bell. As well as generating several published works, Octopus also led to Erica illustrating her first picture book. She has just completed the artwork for her second, ‘The Colt from Old Regret,’ by Dianne Wolfer which will be published in April 2025 by the National Library of Australia.

‘I’ve pondered about which books gave me hope but in many ways it is the act of reading that lifts my spirits and fills me with hope. When I engage with the words of a writer I love, on the page or through my ears, my imagination fires up and I feel alive, engaged, curious, provoked, thoughtful,’ she said.

‘Some key books I’ve worked on are imprinted on my memory,  books like Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi, Isobelle Carmody’s The Farseekers, Maureen McCarthy’s Cross My Heart, Boori Pryor and Meme McDonald’s Maybe Tomorrow.

‘I love books that don’t hold back exploring the full drama of being human – Helen Garner, Elizabeth Strout, Kate Atkinson, memoirs like Gina Chick’s We Are the Stars and books that explore our inner lives: Hagitude by Sharon Blackie, everything by Marie-Louise von Franz, Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes; the brilliant nature writing of Helen Macdonald; books about creativity like What It Is by Lynda Barry and so many poets: Ali Cobby Eckermann, Kristin Henry and of course all the mysterious fairytales in their original non-sanitised forms,’ she said.

‘l also return to books I read as a child like The Wild White Stallion by René Guillot, The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford and Tove Jansson’s Moonin series which I didn’t read as a child but read aloud to my son and daughter.’

Erica grew up near Port Phillip Bay in Melbourne, often walking along the beach with her little dog, and swimming in the sea, where she longed for a horse and adventures.

‘I did try and fly kites there too, not always successfully,’ she laughed, though she said that living next to a park, she has had some success with flying kites with grandchildren.

‘I’ve lived in the inner north of Melbourne for the last twenty four years and I love it for its diversity, its eclectic eccentricities. Our little pocket is blessed with generous, creative neighbours. Of all the places I’ve lived in and around Melbourne it’s here that I feel I can be most fully myself.’

When asked about the most beautiful thing she had seen, Erica spoke of her son and daughter when they were born, her grandchildren, the enormous skies of Australia’s outback, the incredible birdlife and rock art in the north of Australia

‘What I love most about being an artist is that feeling of ‘hello, you’re back – I’ve been waiting for you’ that happens when I step into the studio away from my normal life,’ she said.

The kite theme – Hope Flies – seemed made for the picture book I illustrated – Hope is the Thing by Johanna Bell. So I riffed on the cover illustration of the girl’s imaginative flight with her collaged companions. Birds are such a powerful symbol of hope as they travel between the heavens and earth, showing us so much about resilience, adaptation, survival.’

She first primed the canvas with gesso, then painted it with acrylics and cut out the shapes she wanted to use to make the picture.

‘My collage material comes from old work, piles of life drawings, landscape sketches, still life compositions – abandoned or discarded – as well as plain painted backgrounds, monoprints, and fragments of text from books and journals. I paint the backgrounds loosely, using colours that evoke places I love: the wide-open skies of central and northern Australia, misty mountain forests, wild burnt coastlines, tender sunrises, dramatic storms and sunsets. Onto these colour fields, I place torn and cut shapes, looking for angles and contrasts of light and dark, thick and thin, rough and smooth, curves and straight lines.

‘I draw birds in action and trace their shapes onto the back of the old artworks, so it’s a surprise when I turn the cut shape over. I tear a painting I remember doing on a riverbank in the Kimberley, a leaf print from my garden. I cut out shapes with nail scissors and scalpels. I search through piles of paper that have come from all over the place, from long ago paintings and sketchbooks, for just the right scrap of rough moody colour, the right bright red.

‘As a creator, I’m greatly influenced by the many inspirational children’s book illustrators I’ve had the privilege of working with over the years including Leigh Hobbs, Chris McKimmie, Ann James, Anne Spudvilas, Greg Rogers and so many more. I remain in awe of brilliant creators like Patricia Mullins, Jeannie Baker, Shaun Tan – and constantly return to books from my childhood like Uhu by Annette Macarthur-Onslow and the work of Brian Wildsmith and Eric Carle.’

Asked what she hopes now, for herself, the people she loves and for the world, she said, ‘I am hoping for a huge shift, politically, psychologically, structurally, environmentally, that will enable all people on earth to be who they are, to fulfil their potential, to live in peace and care for our precious earth and all its creatures.

‘For me it is about connection. When a work speaks to me – a painting, a poem, a piece of music, a performance – I feel my soul open up to something deeper than the surface of life,’ she said.

You can find out more about Erica at: www.ericawagner.com.au

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‘Hope is the thing with Feathers and Wings’ – Erica Wagner – bid is at $300 by Erica Wagner

‘Hope is the thing with Feathers and Wings’ – Erica Wagner – bid is at $300

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