Question 1. Does every
Graphical image have to have a meaning?
That's an interesting
question, and a pretty big one you can ask about everything; that is, does
everything you see have a meaning? I think it probably would, if you can think
of one. Meaning is very much 'in the eye of the beholder', and so I like to say
that it is up to the reader to find meaning - often they find ideas in my work
that I haven't thought of myself.
I think you might be asking
if I intentionally put meaning in everything, and the answer to that is no, at
least not consciously. Certainly there are many parts in the book where I have
put many ideas into a lot of details, as you can tell from reading my answers
to other questions. Sometimes things just look good, or I think 'wouldn't it be
cool if I put this there, or made that thing a certain colour' and so on. Often
I find reasons for my decisions only later, when I'm asked questions such as in
this rap.
My general advice, though,
is that if some details don't make sense, or you have trouble finding meaning
in them even after trying, then the problem is most likely with the artist not
communicating clearly enough.
Question 2. What does the
crossed gun and feather pen mean we thought the quill may have been a spear for
the natives crossed culture for The Rabbits guns are we correct?
That's an interesting idea,
although I just saw the gun and pen/feather being both rabbit things, only
because the rabbits put this mark on their property as something they would
have made themselves, and generally would (I imagine) ignore all the numbat
weapons as unimportant. A gun crossed with a spear would have been an
interesting graphic idea relating to the fighting scenes, and would be more
something that the numbats would come up with perhaps.
Question 3. How do the birds
on the opening cover tie in with the story our opinion is that someday the
wildlife and water may return to the natives favor because the water is very
tranquil to begin with and there is dull and harsh land as soon as the Rabbits
arrive is this what you intended?
I think your thoughts are
quite similar to mine, and that's a good interpretation. It started off as an
opening image, which I think is quite important, and refers to the billabongs
and long-legged birds mentioned later in the book. The fact that they are there
again at the end I think suggests the possibility of their return, or else that
they still exist strongly in memory as a lost paradise that is not forgotten.
The fact that the rabbits arrive in a desert area at the beginning is not so
important; I just wanted to get the sense that they pass through different
landscapes at first. You can see the chimney on the horizon is scaring away a
lot of birds in one of the first pictures, so I saw the billabong and desert as
more or less the same place (on the title page, there are birds all turning to
look at something - I was thinking that they were noticing the rabbits coming
from a distance).
Question 4.On the last page
of the book _who will save us_ has the land turned bare because we have
compared the page where the rabbits where building and the land was growing and
being destroyed, then on the last page there seems to be nothing but scattered
objects, what was the meaning of this, was this intentional to seem this way?
Yes, that was my intention.
Throughout the book it is not clear what the timeframe is, so the last page may
be soon after everything else, or a long time after. My idea was that the main
problem with the rabbits is ultimately environmental destruction; as it is with
our own society, where if things continue exactly as they are going now,
everything will end up dying - you can't keep exapnding forever and using up
resources. (The numbats, however, have managed to live for a long time in
relative harmony with nature, and respecting the land.) So at the end of the
process of construction, the rabbits end up with something that's actually
self-destructive, hence a quit barren landscape covered with broken bits of
junk.
Question 5.With the
scrapbook looking page _still more of them came_ did you get your inspiration
from Leonardo Da Vinci because your complex machinery looks similar to
Leonardo_s historical works?
Yes, probably a little bit,
because I've always been interested in Da Vinci's drawings of war machines, and
maybe the pen and ink style of the picture makes you think of this. I have many
other influences as well, so it is often hard to pinpoint particular ideas and
where they might have come from; I did look a lot at 19th century engravings of
war scenes, and one illustration of the Hawkesbury River massacre, where there
was a big fight between local aborigines and colonial police - the picture with
the horses is based on the original engraving.
