Q & A with C. Anne MacLeod

1. When do you like to do your illustrations (time of day, day of week)? Where do you do your illustrating (location)?

Mornings in my third floor studio looking east out over Bannerman Park.

2. What was your first illustration in print (in a book, magazine, or article, etc)?

The ASIFA (Association Internationale du Film d’Animation) magazine cover, October 1989—awarded through competition. I used Thai cultural themes influenced by a just-concluded five-year experience of intermittent work in Thailand to illustrate the initials ASIFA.

3. What other jobs have you had besides being an illustrator?

Engineering Assistant with the Bell Telephone in Montreal; Real Estate agent, Dartmouth, NS; Bank teller with the first CIBC branch on MUN campus; Travel claim clerk in Comptroller’s office at MUN; Graphic and animation trainer, CIDA project, Thailand; Print Layout Design, graphics and animation, CIDA project, Malaysia; and Print Layout Design, graphics and animation, CIDA project, Brazil.

4. What was your favourite illustrated book(s) when you were a child?

Enid Blyton’s series of mystery books for girls.

5. Who is your favourite artist(s)?

Emily Carr, who understands light and captures the essence of the West coast evergreen trees and forest.

6. What do you like to do in your free time?

Rebuild the garden at our 1858-built house in Lance Cove, Bell Island.

7. What is your favourite food?

Japanese food is wonderful. We were introduced to it when we frequented a local Japanese restaurant that was across the street from the apartment hotel we lived in during our five-year project in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

8. What is your favourite movie(s)?

Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1982). The interplay of animation and real life film are interwoven in a powerful and dramatic way. It’s set during the Second World War, an unforgettable time for my parents and a period that influenced my early years. At that time we lived in Douglas, Isle of Man, British Isles.

9. If you could live during any time period and in any place, when and where would you choose?

I love being in the present. The past I’ve experienced has seen much change and the future promises great innovations we can’t imagine.

10. Make a question of your own and then answer it.

What projects are you working on now?

Tom Dawe and I are beginning to talk about something, while I have two stories of my own, “Flame of the Forest” and “The Noonday Gunner,” that I’m illustrating while working through the evolving text. The latter may also be an animation project.