Saturday with Oliver Jeffers: 'I wake up, go to the studio, paint until I get too hungry'

Artist, author and illustrator Oliver Jeffers splits his time between Brooklyn, NY where he has his main studio, and Hollywood, Down, where he lives with his wife Suzanne, son Harland and daughter Mari.

Artist and author Oliver Jeffers in his studio using the Caran d'Ache Luminance Creative Set

08.00

When I’m in Brooklyn I’ll wake up, go to the studio, paint until I get too hungry and then try to talk somebody into giving me lunch. 

I’ll then paint until I forget to eat dinner, then some friends will come around and drink a glass of wine and then I’ll go home.

In Hollywood, for breakfast I sometimes use my grandma’s old pancake recipe but there’s a crepe mix that we used to get in Brooklyn that my kids love, so anytime I’m there I’ll get a couple of big jars of that.

10.00

My son goes to tennis lessons near the beach. 

During covid we tried to do a bit of sea swimming, and the cold has never bothered him, so on summer days we try to jump in the ocean.

12.00

My wife will have picked up Mari from Irish dancing lessons so we’ll go home to collect her, pick up my dad and go to St George’s Market to get a crepe.

I quote my dad Paul a lot – he’s a very wise man. He was a teacher and I’m always seeking his advice.

When I found out we were going to have our first child I asked him what the secret was and at first he said “I don’t know” but then he said “I think it was consistency. It’s a turbulent world out there and I tried to be a safe harbour”.

13.00

We’ll pick up ingredients from the market or we’ll walk down to Hollywood. My wife grew up here. Her version of social media is to take a walk into town and find out what everyone is up to.

I’ve had a long-standing relationship with fishmonger Walter Ewing on the Shankill Road. I painted a portrait of him that was in the National Portrait Gallery and he uses it as his logo now. 

If we’re cooking for people he’ll set me aside a side of salmon and I might nail it to a board and cook it beside a fire Finnish-style.

I am back in New York for a couple of weeks every couple of months. I’ve book festivals and conferences to attend. 

I’ve always enjoyed travelling but it is just past the comfortable level in terms of quantity, so when I’m home the kids just want to hang out with me.

Oliver Jeffers by Erika Hokanson

15.00

I have a studio at the bottom of the garden but I’ll try to avoid it unless I have a really serious deadline or I’m doing a project with the kids and then it’s their studio, not mine. 

I’m aware there’s only a window of about 10 years in which my kids will want to be present with us so I‘m trying to enjoy it as much as possible.

So much of my work comes from thinking about things and watching how people interact and how to explain things to children, so even when I’m not working consciously I’m still gathering information and thinking about how to translate what I observe.

I used to think my fine art and my storytelling were very different enterprises. 

I used to think the storytelling was just about entertainment and the art-making was the questioning and the attempt to understand the world around me, but in looking back I realise that there have been parallels in terms of colour use and style choices.

With war, with climate change, there’s that sense of disunity. From space, it’s obvious that there is only us.

There’s a great quote by Frank White who was a Nasa engineer: ‘We’re going to have to start acting as one species. We’re not going to survive if we don’t start doing that.’

17.00

Friends might come over with their kids. 

I might slow-roast a chicken on the barbecue and make some roast potatoes and salad with some bread from the bakery in town.

21.00

It’s a wrestling match to try to get the children to bed at a reasonable hour while being polite company. We’ll read three books and then it’s lights out.

If it’s early enough, myself and Suzanne might watch something or I might read. 

At the moment I’m reading Fintan O’Toole’s We Don’t Know Ourselves and Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting. We just finished watching Shōgun and The Lands of Saints and Sinners.

00.00

We’ll hit the hay about midnight unless we make the poor decision to stay up later. Maybe you do get more sensible when you get older!

• Artist, author and illustrator Oliver Jeffers splits his time between Brooklyn, NY where he has his main studio, and Hollywood, Co Down, where he lives with his wife Suzanne, son Harland and daughter Mari. 
• His latest book, ‘The Dictionary Story’, published by Walker Books, will be released in August. See oliverjeffers.com
• The Caran d’Ache Luminance Creative Set in collaboration with Oliver Jeffers brings together the artist’s favourite tools and colours with a QR code offering access to an online course by Jeffers himself. See carandache.com.