Drawn From the Depths

Lucas' books are marked by a strong sense of place, and have a transformative experience at the heart of each story. But they are also marked by what they omit, for not everything is explained.

The pictures hint at something unsaid. And this quality of ambiguity is what makes the books so good; they ask the reader to follow their own imagination, and to engage with something more profound. Set in a timeless past, and peopled by characters resembling little toy figures, these are not stories of individuals, but of universal experiences.

In his beautiful new book, a whale first squashes a seaside town and then, with the support of the townsfolk and the approval of the wind, the sun, and indeed the universe, rebuilds it – turning it into a place more special than it was before, a place that is in a sense sanctified.

'I suppose to me it's really about something mysterious and powerful that's beyond your control.

Lucas says of Whale: 'I suppose to me it's really about something mysterious and powerful that's beyond your control. They [the townsfolk] do listen to the owl and Jo, and try and help the whale. And they are rewarded for that.

They could have listened to the fishmonger and made a great big fish pie! To me it's about nature, and if nature had a face it might be like a whale. He's a personification of forces.'

The whale is indeed a significant symbolic figure in this story. Its skin is decorated with something like Arabic lettering, and lines that suggest writing or perhaps planks of grained wood. It seems to be part book, part boat.

'I love the idea that he maybe embodies some kind of secrets or magical notation all along his back,' says Lucas, 'I like those stories about people seeing the name of God on the back of an adder or inside an aubergine or something, and the idea that things are written all around you.

And that Jungian idea of symbols being dredged up from the unconscious, and the sea being the unconscious, and the whale representing that part of you that does know stuff, even though you don't know that you know it. And there it is, all written down on his back!'

Nutmeg, published in 2005, also tells a symbolic story. Nutmeg and her unusual family live in a devastated, apocalyptic, junk-yard of a place. They have no proper food and nothing to do until a genie's magic wishes transform everything; at first meals, then their home, then the land and sea and stars and then life itself.

Lucas describes it as a Wizard of Oz based in East Anglia. 'I spent a lot of time in East Anglia as a child, looking at mud flats and rusting boatyards – somewhere really desolate. It could be the end of the world when everything is grey and creaking in the wind. Help!' he laughs.

'And there's a mindset that I was exposed to as a kid. Food was often just a purely practical fuel, but not a pleasure, and that to me made a handy metaphor for lack of imagination in life and being stuck in a rut. That's what I was trying to get at.'

'Nutmeg is about how you can grow up in a home environment where there is a lack of vision and terrible claustrophobia. And all it takes is one person to make one move – and it's a house of cards the whole thing.

Because it wasn't alive, it wasn't prospering, it wasn't energetic, so it actually crumbles quite easily once a person is brave enough to make a move. And then everything is transformed from that one act.'

If all this sounds a bit high-flown for a children's book, don't be put off. The symbolism is deep-buried and beautifully handled. But symbolism and resonance are essential to Lucas' creative thinking.He has a fondness for folk, outsider and children's art, because they are symbolic:

'They are decorative and representational at exactly the same moment…. A lot of outsider art is done by people who are in mental hospitals or who just live in their own private world. Their work shares a lot of the characteristics of religious art. It's very repetitive and rhythmic and obsessive.

People are doing it because they have to. So you really feel they have got something to say. They are not doing it for a pretty picture, they're doing it because they are trying to impart some message to the world or something. I think I'm finding something of myself in that.'

If Lucas is imparting messages, they are not overt. His stories come from within his experience and interests, exploring emotions that are accessible to all. 'I often try and find a hang-up, a problem that I have, and then try and portray it in symbolic terms and in a way that other people can relate to.'

Sometimes, too, the stories include hints of other classic tales: The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Aladdin, Noah's Ark, or Jonah and the Whale. Lucas is clear about his influences

'I've always liked medieval art. I like things that are flat and decorative, and I like bright colours with gold.'

'I've always liked medieval art. I like things that are flat and decorative, and I like bright colours with gold. A lot of the art I like is religious art. It's rhythmic and linear and flat.

All those qualities create a sense of otherworldliness that I think suits picture books – a sense that there's something beneath the surface.The whole point with medieval art is that it's about symbols and things representing a higher reality.'

Halibut Jackson, the first picture book that Lucas both wrote and illustrated, is less symbolic than the other two, but is still highly decorative – in a sense it is all about patterns. The story is of a shy boy who makes outfits for himself to ensure that he is camouflaged wherever he goes.

One day, when dressed up for a party at the palace, he is caught out and noticed by everyone, which turns out for the best, because he finds acceptance, self-confidence and individuality. As in Lucas' other titles, it ends with a powerful sense of liberation.

Lucas remarks, 'It seems that with Halibut Jackson people could really relate to that feeling of shyness – although shy is shorthand for a feeling. It's more than him being shy, it's actually about being frightened even to exist somehow, and wanting to blend in to the point of invisibility. Halibut Jackson gets so good at not existing that it becomes a skill in itself.'

As well as such depths, the books contain humour and vitality, and are linked by their richness and magic. There is richness in the colour, detail and patterning of the artwork, as well as the symbolism.

And magic is all around in the settings that Lucas creates - worlds studded with flames and stars and fanciful flowers, birds that talk, suns and moons with human faces and gestures, and stories with fantastical, joyous, hope-filled resolutions.

Lucas's work leaves a lasting impression, not just for the resonance of the stories, but also for the concept of each book as a whole, the endpapers tell us something about the story within. Pictures break energetically out of their frames, pacing is expertly managed through variations in layouts, and the reader is kept close to the action, through a viewpoint almost entirely at eye-level.

He explains, 'I tend to see the spaces and the pictures as a stage set, where everything is a camp pantomime. But I'm presenting it as though I see it entirely seriously. Theatre can be so magical where you have a prop, say, baldly presented and yet it becomes alive.

I like to present information in that way in a picture – it's a little bit clunky, and obviously symbolic, and creaking at the seams a bit, but if there's enough there to lose yourself in, it works.' And work it most certainly does.