One of the illustrations I exhibited twenty-nine years ago at Westport West Gallery in Kansas City

       Mark English is the most awarded illustrator in the history of the Society of Illustrators in New York. In the 1980s Mark and his ex-wife Peggy owned and ran Westport West Illustration Gallery and it featured the work of America's best illustrators, people like Bernie Fuchs, Bart Forbes, Bob Peak, and Alan Cober. For some reason they included me too, though I had very little on my resume. Mr. English asked me to lunch and I almost got sick from nerves. He said my work was fantastic. I'm sure I responded with something self-effacing. He said: I hope that you don't learn so much that it ruins what you already have. I'll never forget that. I think he meant don't let technique smother instinct. Here is one of the pieces I exhibited there in 1982.                                                    

Horror/Fantasy Anthology by PS Publishing 2010

Here's one of the illustrations I did for PS Publishing's 2010 anthology
The Company He Keeps

Edited by Peter Crowthers and Nick Gevers
Illustrated by Mark Geyer
ISBN-10: 1848630492
ISBN-13: 978-1848630499

PS Publishing, United Kingdom / Published 09/01/2010
 

Drawings I did as a kid; my mother, etcetera..

                                                                        Age six:

                                                     

                                                                      Age nine:

                                                                      

                                                                   

                                                                         

           I used to love to make up aerial views of farms and roads that vanished back into the mountains. I was very interested in perspective.  All of my trees were leafless--I was more interested in the structure of the tree or maybe it was because leafy trees are difficult to draw. I never had much use for color. Now I use prismacolor colored pencil over ink when color is required. I do not like to paint. In college classes I used to mix up way too much paint in trying to reach the color I wanted. I don't enjoy the clumsiness of the brush. I can paint, but it gives me a dumb feeling, as if I'm a child, making mud pies in the wet dirt.  

          My mother was a great influence on all of us. Whenever we'd bring home a project that we had to do for school, we'd clear everything off the kitchen table and get down to business. It was great to have her help on a map, a poster, a diagram, or a drawing. She always wanted us to take a very ambitious approach. She might as well have been saying to us: "Okay. Now. Let's see. How would daVinci approach this?" Italians might talk with their hands, but my mother talks with her entire body.

          Here's a drawing she did of me back then:

           My mother, Joan Lavigueur Geyer, is 81. We like to talk on the phone about art: what the other one is doing, etc. She's a botanical artist. We all went to D.C. last October to see her work on exhibit at the Smithsonian. The same work will be on exhibit at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, U.K. this June thru October. She grew up in New York City, attended the Phoenix School of Design, held several studio jobs in Manhattan, painting designs on children's furniture, illustrating for ASTA Travel News and Nature's Path magazines, working for a French hat designer, etc. She has exhibited at MOMA. Here's a picture of my mother, Joan Lavigueur Geyer, my daughter, Anna, and my niece, Lily. Anna is an art student at Portland State University and has had one and two man shows of her work. And, Lily is just plain adorable.

            
           My mother's father, Roch Oliver Joseph Charles DeLage deLavigueur, born in 1885 in Montreal, was a landscape artist and architectural draftsman. He did the most beautiful pencil drawings I've ever seen--except for some of my mother's work. Roch's father designed wallpaper for a living.