‘I haven’t changed much since I was ten’

In 2015, Alice Hoogstad won the Golden Pencil for Monster book, a picture book about a girl who walks through the city with crayons in the pocket of her dress. She got the message about the prize while she was on vacation, in a place without internet. “And of course you don’t believe it when you receive such a prize. I could read the mail in the village, where they did have internet. But then we drove back and I thought: I must not have seen it properly. We went to look again later: is it really true?”

She tells it as we walk through Museum Kranenburgh in Bergen, where there is an exhibition of her work. There are three of us, Alice Hoogstad, Laura Eijpe, who put together the exhibition, and the reporter.

“When I asked you for the exhibition, you responded the same way,” says Laura Eijpe. “You just couldn’t believe it, you were surprised that you were allowed to hang out here with your work.” Alice Hoogstad: “And then the exhibition was postponed for a few months. I thought: see, it’s not happening. They made a mistake, they must have someone else.”

You also thought it was strange that I emailed you for this interview.

“I didn’t understand why you wanted to talk to me. I have a hard time putting things into words – yes, in my head. I make complete sentences there. Or on paper. Then you can sculpt, you can move words until it says what you want.”

Like with drawing.

“Yes, drawings only go out if they are good enough.”

Alice Hoogstad (67, she is married and has an adult daughter) has made illustrations for more than two hundred books. She drew stories by Guus Kuijer, Paul van Loon, Rindert Kromhout, Lydia Rood, Sjoerd Kuyper, Erik and Elle van Lieshout. Because many of those books have been translated, her illustrations can be seen from Finland to Italy and from Argentina to China and South Korea. Since 2005 she has been making her own picture books: Bollard and the boat, Nino and Nina, Monster book, My grandmother is a stork.

When is good good enough?

“The bad thing is: so many people can say they love it, but if I don’t think so myself, I don’t get those endorphins. Do you understand?”

Not quite. An award or exhibition is appreciation, isn’t it?

“Yes, but I don’t believe that. I’ve gotten better at it, you know. The great thing about getting older is that you can finally say: this is the best I am capable of. I was always thinking that things had to be better – better again, even better. Now I think: of course there are people who are better than me, so what. This is the best thing I can make. Because I want to make the best I can – I still work like a man possessed.”

Alice Hoogstad grew up in Rhoon (near Rotterdam). Her father was an architect, the family had five children and many pets: chickens, cats, goats, rabbits, horses. “The smell of my youth is the smell of wet concrete and horse manure. We had art in the house, there were even designer chairs, but a pony could also come in – or goats. My sister has a wooden dining table that still has the paw prints of a goat on it, when we were playing a circus.”

It had actually been a certainty that she would go to art school since she drew on the streets and walls as a little girl. Monster book is a reminder of this: in a city without color, a girl draws a long, red thread on the road. Then she draws happy, cuddly monsters that help her color. Then other children also start coloring. And then, when the whole city is colored in, the adults tell the children to scrub the colors away.

Alice Hoogstad: “As a child, I always had sidewalk chalk with me on the way to school. And I would fill the walls with that, often as a long line. The next day those lines were gone again. Every time I thought: how nice, they cleaned it – and then I filled those walls again. Until one day the teacher took me out of class and I had to remove everything with a brush, all the way home from school.”

Now one of the rooms of the exhibition is in Museum Kranenburgh Alice Hoogstad: Monsters and Crocodile equipped for children. She has drawn the city from the book over four white walls, and on a long table in the middle of the room there are paper, crayons and scissors with which you can make your own monster, cut it out and stick it somewhere in the city. About two thousand children have done this in recent months; the exhibition opened in October (and has been extended until the beginning of April).

When you went to art school, there was particular appreciation for abstract art.

“Yes, that was difficult. Now it is more normal for you to draw stories, but in the late 1970s you mainly made large, abstract works of art – and I love painting, but I am an illustrator through and through. At one point I thought: for my final exams I will make a series of abstract works that are all more or less the same, then it will probably be okay. And it was. It was fine. Nowadays I sometimes think: I would like to do it again. With everything I know now, I would get more out of it. I was actually too young, seventeen when I started. I didn’t dare to ask or discuss much. You have to dare to let others look.”

It was also a training to become a free artist, I think?

“Yes. And you would rather be a link somewhere.”

A link?

“Sitting alone… I like being alone… But you want to be part of the world. You learn from it when you see more people, when you hear what they think. And that happens a lot more when you make something together than when you are alone. But commissioned work was looked down on, as it was commercial. At a certain point I stopped making free work, because I felt a kind of split: one half wanted to paint, the other to illustrate. And then you look at your free work or vice versa and that is no longer correct. Then I chose to illustrate for children: tackling one thing head on.”

And what was that like?

“In the beginning I had to get used to it. I had trouble making sweet drawings, I couldn’t master that. But hey, that also has two sides: after a while I only got horror books to illustrate.”

Do you prefer a certain type of books?

“I shouldn’t have too much of the same thing in a row. For a while I kept having books with parents breaking up, or with children on drugs. I could draw it backwards upside down with my eyes closed. I said to my publisher: I want something different, give me a different kind of story. Then I got Guus Kuijer. Guus Kuijer! I went to lunch with him because he wanted to get to know each other. That kept me awake for three nights: what would he think of my work? Later I received a letter from him saying he was happy with my drawings. Fantastic, of course I kept that letter. Sometimes it goes like this, then something falls into your lap.”

You had already been illustrating for twenty years when you published your first book, ‘Bolder en de boot’. Did you only consider yourself good enough for that then?

“I was curious: could I do that? But it was also because you quickly find yourself in a few boxes. I have always worked for different publishers, but still: you are asked because they already know something about you, because they know that you can handle a certain subject. And there was never an assignment for a picture book for the youngest children. So I wanted to show: this is also possible.”

Is there a difference between working from your head and working from a text?

“When I read a text, a movie immediately plays in my head. But your own book or your own film is closer. It arises from itself. If you make drawings for an existing story, you are practicing your craft more.”

Is it necessary to have children around?

“I don’t think it’s necessary. I feel like I haven’t changed much since I was ten, I still have the same wonder, the same amazement in life. But you have to be careful not to make everything out of your thumb. You also have to go out into the world to come up with ideas. And children bring you a lot, their comments, what they see.”

A few years ago she suffered a TIA, a mild stroke, a few times. You can see it, on one side her face is a little crooked. She started working less hard. “You are confronted with the facts: take it easy for a while, enjoy things a little more. Now when the weather is nice, I go swimming in the sea – in the past I would continue working. And I also want to enjoy it more. It’s such a nice feeling that I finally think I’m good enough.”

But working less is not the same as quitting work. Prints are displayed in the first room of the exhibition Mr. Makkelie’s night lanterns, which came out last year. There are surreal scenes in the book: a bed hanging upside down against a ceiling, a flying fish in a city at night, a dancer whose skirt is a cage filled with birds. “I wanted to stop completely for a moment, take some rest. But it still started to itch. I had intense dreams at that time, stories that arise without you having any control over them. I then made these prints of that.”

All prints have a story created by authors such as Sjoerd Kuyper, Paul van Loon, Marjolijn Hof or Dolf Verroen. How did that come about? “I said a bit rudely: if there are stories to come, I really want the best writers. I thought they would refuse it, but almost all of them did. They were also often guessing: what is your intention with that drawing. But I didn’t say anything, it was a surprise what they came up with. So for this book the tables were turned. I started, they followed.”

And perhaps that is also the message of forty years of illustrating. “It’s not all set in stone, things can arise naturally. You have to keep surprising yourself, that’s what makes it fun. And that it has meaning for children. Because everything starts with the children.”

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