James Gurney

Last updated

James Gurney
Born (1958-06-14) June 14, 1958 (age 66)
NationalityAmerican
Education Art Center College of Design
Alma mater University of California, Berkeley (BA)
Known forIllustration, paleoart
Website jamesgurney.com

James Gurney (born June 14, 1958) is an American artist and author known for his illustrated book series Dinotopia , which is presented in the form of a 19th-century explorer's journal from an island utopia cohabited by humans and dinosaurs.

Contents

Gurney is also a paleoartist who depicts and restores in his paintings extinct fauna such as both avian and non-avian dinosaurs.

Life and education

James Gurney was born on June 14, 1958, in Glendale, California. [1] He grew up in Palo Alto, California, the youngest of five children of Joanna and Robert Gurney, a mechanical engineer. [2]

Growing up, he showed great interest in dinosaurs but found few books on the subject in his local library or school. The first dinosaur fossil he saw was that of an Allosaurus at a museum. His fascination with dinosaurs led to an interest in archaeology. As a youth, he dug up his home's back yard looking for arrowheads or lost temples. [1]

He studied anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, receiving a bachelor of arts degree with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1979. [1] He then studied illustration at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, for a couple of semesters. [1]

Gurney met his wife, fellow artist Jeanette, as a sketching partner [3] in Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California. [4] Together they moved to the Hudson Valley of New York, where they raised their two sons. [4] Gurney welcomed his family around when painting, setting up a play space in the studio near his painting table. [5] The couple are still avid outdoor painters, [6] living in a small town in the Hudson Valley. [4] [7]

Career

Prompted by a cross-country adventure on freight trains, he and Thomas Kinkade coauthored The Artist's Guide to Sketching in 1982.

Gurney and Kinkade also worked as painters of background scenes [8] for the animated film Fire and Ice (1983), co-produced by Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta. [9]

Gurney's freelance illustration career began in the 1980s, during which time he developed his characteristic realistic renderings of fantastic scenes, painted in oil using methods similar to the academic realists and Golden Age illustrators. He painted more than 70 covers for science fiction and fantasy paperback novels, and he created several stamp designs for the U.S. Postal Service, most notably The World of Dinosaurs in 1996.

Starting in 1983, he began work on over a dozen assignments for National Geographic magazine, including reconstructions of the ancient Moche, Kushite, and Etruscan civilizations, and the Jason and Ulysses voyages for Tim Severin.

The inspiration that came from researching these archaeological reconstructions led to a series of lost-world panoramas, including Waterfall City (1988) and Dinosaur Parade (1989).

With the encouragement of retired publishers Ian and Betty Ballantine, he discontinued his freelance work and committed two years' time to writing and illustrating Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time , published in 1992. The book made The New York Times Bestseller List, and won Hugo, World Fantasy, Chesley, Spectrum, and Colorado Children's Book awards. It sold over a million copies and was translated into 18 languages. [10]

Sequels of Dinotopia that are both written and illustrated by Gurney include Dinotopia: The World Beneath (1995), Dinotopia: First Flight (1999), and Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara (2007).

Original artwork by Gurney from the Dinotopia books has been exhibited at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution, the Norman Rockwell Museum, the Royal Tyrrell Museum and is currently[ when? ] on tour to museums throughout the United States and Europe.

Most recently, he has written two art-instruction books: Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist (2009), a book about drawing and painting things that do not exist; [11] and Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter (2010). [12] These books are based upon Gurney's blog posts, in which he gives practical advice to realist and fantasy artists.

On February 21, 2012, Gurney was inducted as a Living Master by the Art Renewal Center. [13] [14]

The dinosaur Torvosaurus gurneyi was named in honor of Gurney in 2014. [15]

Related Research Articles

Magical realism, magic realism, or marvelous realism is a style or genre of fiction and art that presents a realistic view of the world while incorporating magical elements, often blurring the lines between speculation and reality. Magical realism is the most commonly used of the three terms and refers to literature in particular. Magic realism often refers to literature in particular, with magical or supernatural phenomena presented in an otherwise real-world or mundane setting, commonly found in novels and dramatic performances. In his article "Magical Realism in Spanish American Literature", Luis Leal explains the difference between magic literature and magical realism, stating that, "Magical realism is not magic literature either. Its aim, unlike that of magic, is to express emotions, not to evoke them." Despite including certain magic elements, it is generally considered to be a different genre from fantasy because magical realism uses a substantial amount of realistic detail and employs magical elements to make a point about reality, while fantasy stories are often separated from reality. The two are also distinguished in that magic realism is closer to literary fiction than to fantasy, which is instead a type of genre fiction. Magical realism is often seen as an amalgamation of real and magical elements that produces a more inclusive writing form than either literary realism or fantasy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual art of the United States</span>

Visual art of the United States or American art is visual art made in the United States or by U.S. artists. Before colonization, there were many flourishing traditions of Native American art, and where the Spanish colonized Spanish Colonial architecture and the accompanying styles in other media were quickly in place. Early colonial art on the East Coast initially relied on artists from Europe, with John White the earliest example. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, artists primarily painted portraits, and some landscapes in a style based mainly on English painting. Furniture-makers imitating English styles and similar craftsmen were also established in the major cities, but in the English colonies, locally made pottery remained resolutely utilitarian until the 19th century, with fancy products imported.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wayne Thiebaud</span> American painter (1920–2021)

Wayne Thiebaud was an American painter known for his colorful works depicting commonplace objects—pies, cakes, lipsticks, paint cans, ice cream cones, pastries, and hot dogs—as well as for his landscapes and figure paintings. Thiebaud is associated with the pop art movement because of his interest in objects of mass culture, although his early works, executed during the fifties and sixties, slightly predate the works of the classic pop artists. Thiebaud used heavy pigment and exaggerated colors to depict his subjects, and the well-defined shadows characteristic of advertisements were almost always included in his work.

<i>Dinotopia</i> Fantasy book series

Dinotopia is a series of illustrated fantasy books, created by author and illustrator James Gurney. It is set in the titular Dinotopia, an isolated island inhabited by shipwrecked humans and sapient dinosaurs who have learned to coexist peacefully as a single symbiotic society. The first book was published in 1992 and has "appeared in 18 languages in more than 30 countries and sold two million copies." Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time and Dinotopia: The World Beneath both won Hugo awards for best original artwork.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Photorealism</span> Genre of art

Photorealism is a genre of art that encompasses painting, drawing and other graphic media, in which an artist studies a photograph and then attempts to reproduce the image as realistically as possible in another medium. Although the term can be used broadly to describe artworks in many different media, it is also used to refer to a specific art movement of American painters that began in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

James C. Christensen was an American illustrator and painter of religious and fantasy art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Kinkade</span> American painter of popular realistic, bucolic, and idyllic subjects

William Thomas Kinkade III was an American painter of popular realistic, pastoral, and idyllic subjects. He is notable for achieving success during his lifetime with the mass marketing of his work as printed reproductions and other licensed products by means of the Thomas Kinkade Company. According to Kinkade's company, one in every 20 American homes owned a copy of one of his paintings.

<i>Torvosaurus</i> Megalosaurid theropod dinosaur genus from Late Jurassic Period

Torvosaurus is a genus of large megalosaurine theropod dinosaur that lived approximately 165 to 148 million years ago during the Callovian to Tithonian ages of the late Middle and Late Jurassic period in what is now Colorado, Portugal, Germany, and possibly England, Spain, Tanzania, and Uruguay. It contains two currently recognized species, Torvosaurus tanneri and Torvosaurus gurneyi, plus a third unnamed species from Germany.

Donato Giancola is an American artist specializing in narrative realism with science fiction and fantasy content, including images for Tolkien's Middle-earth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julie Bell</span> American artist (born 1958)

Julie Bell is an American fine artist, illustrator, photographer, bodybuilder and wildlife painter. Bell is also a fantasy artist and a representative of the heroic fantasy and fantastic realism genres. Bell has won Chesley Awards and was the designer of the Dragons of Destiny series. She also won first place awards in the Art Renewal Center International Salon, which bestowed on her the title "ARC Living Master".

Robert Alan Bechtle was an American painter, printmaker, and educator. He lived nearly all his life in the San Francisco Bay Area and whose art was centered on scenes from everyday local life. His paintings are in a Photorealist style and often depict automobiles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atelier</span> Workshop or studio of a professional artist in the fine or decorative arts

An atelier is the private workshop or studio of a professional artist in the fine or decorative arts or an architect, where a principal master and a number of assistants, students, and apprentices can work together producing fine art or visual art released under the master's name or supervision.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Joshua Chaplin</span> French painter

Charles Joshua Chaplin was a French painter and printmaker who painted both landscapes and portraits. He worked in techniques such as pastels, lithography, watercolor, chalk, oil painting and etching. He was best known for his elegant portraits of young women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacob Collins</span> American painter (born 1964)

Jacob Collins is an American realist painter working in New York City. He is a leading figure of the contemporary classical art revival.

<i>Dinotopia</i> (miniseries) 2002 multi-national TV series or program

Dinotopia is a television miniseries produced by Hallmark Entertainment in association with RTL Television Germany. It is based on the Dinotopia book series by James Gurney, that depicts a fictional utopia in which sapient dinosaurs and humans coexist. The miniseries serves as a sequel to the Dinotopia books, Dinotopia (1992) and Dinotopia: The World Beneath (1995). The main characters of the story are two American teenage boys from contemporary times. The boys' father's plane crashes into the sea and they get stranded on Dinotopia, where they must adjust to a new society. The story in the film contains references to many of the characters in the book series, with some of their descendants occupying key roles in the plot. The original score was composed by Trevor Jones. This score is performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Geoffrey Alexander.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Baptiste Monge</span> French fantasy author and illustrator (born 1971)

Jean-Baptiste Monge is a French-Canadian fantasy author and illustrator. After twelve years spent in Canada, he lives again in France, in Alsace.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nelson Shanks</span> American painter

John Nelson Shanks was an American artist and painter. His best known works include his portrait of Diana, Princess of Wales, first shown at Hirschl & Adler Gallery in New York City, April 24 to June 28, 1996, and the portrait of president Bill Clinton for the National Portrait Gallery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paint mixing</span>

Paint mixing is the practice of mixing components or colors of paint to combine them into a working material and achieve a desired hue. The components that go into paint mixing depend on the function of the product sought to be produced. For example, a painter of portraits or scenery on a canvas may be seeking delicate hues and subtle gradiations, while the painter of a house may be more concerned with durability and consistency of colors in paints presented to customers, and the painter of a bridge or a ship may have the weatherability of the paint as their primary concern.

Bruno Civitico was an Italian-born American painter, draughtsman and teacher. He is widely considered to be "a major player in the development of Classicism," and "one of the most important artists of the Neoclassical Figurative revival movement."

Jon McNaughton is an American artist and Republican. He is known for his paintings depicting American conservative political figures, in particular prominent Republicans, and Christian imagery. He began his style of political painting during the Barack Obama administration, creating works in support of the Tea Party movement. He subsequently became a supporter of Donald Trump.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Marvel at Dinotopia: The Fantastical Art of James Gurney". Foster's Daily Democrat. January 31, 2013. Retrieved February 19, 2024.
  2. ↑ Jackson, Donald Dale (September 1995). "Daring Deeds, Bold Dreams, in a Land Removed from Time". p. 73. Smithsonian .
  3. ↑ Gurney, James (August 1, 2007). "Gurney Journey: Meet Jeanette". Gurney Journey. Retrieved September 6, 2024.
  4. 1 2 3 "James Gurney – U.S. Department of State" . Retrieved September 6, 2024.
  5. ↑ Gurney, James (February 18, 2015). "Gurney Journey: Art and Family". Gurney Journey. Retrieved September 6, 2024.
  6. ↑ "Facebook". www.facebook.com. Retrieved September 6, 2024.
  7. ↑ "A Visit with James and Jeanette Gurney". Winsor Kinkade. January 21, 2020. Retrieved September 6, 2024.
  8. ↑ Bensimhon, M. (October 1992). "Living with Dinosaurs: Inside the Mind of a Man Who Makes Fantasy Seem Real". p. 54. Life . .
  9. ↑ Robinson, S. (1997). "James Gurney: Artist and Author Extraordinaire (b. 1958)". Rocks & Minerals . 72 (5): 335–338. Bibcode:1997RoMin..72..335R. doi:10.1080/00357529709605061.
  10. ↑ Parks, John (November 2006). "Fact & Fantasy: The Paintings of James Gurney". p. 43. American Artist .
  11. ↑ Gurney, James (October 20, 2009). Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist. Andrews McMeel. ISBN   978-0-7407-8550-4. LCCN   2009015708.
  12. ↑ Gurney, James (November 30, 2010). Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter. Andrews McMeel. ISBN   978-0-7407-9771-2. LCCN   2010924512.
  13. ↑ "James Gurney: ARC Living Master". Art Renewal Center.
  14. ↑ "Art Renewal Center". February 21, 2012.
  15. ↑ Hendrickx, C.; Mateus, O.V. (2014). Evans, Alistair Robert (ed.). "Torvosaurus gurneyi n. sp., the Largest Terrestrial Predator from Europe, and a Proposed Terminology of the Maxilla Anatomy in Nonavian Theropods". PLOS One . 9 (3): e88905. Bibcode:2014PLoSO...988905H. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0088905 . PMC   3943790 . PMID   24598585.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.