KAREN LEE SCHMIDT
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A  Brief Biography

When I was growing up, my father named the spiders in our house Sam, Herman, and Henry and told us their detailed family histories so that we, his five children, would not be inclined to stomp on them! There were also many occasions when he stopped the car to give an assist to slow-moving snakes and turtles trying to make their way across the highway. Like our  spiders, they too had families to go home to.

We also had Vertigo, an old palomino parade horse, and Charlie, a Labrador retriever. We lived in the Mojave Desert, in California, when there were few houses and no fences, so our yard played host to a wide variety of desert animals. Two large turtles took up residence in our cactus garden. Roadrunners and jackrabbits ventured into and out of the yard. There were legions of lizards and herds of horned toads, not to mention snakes and tarantulas.

My illustrations are populated by as wide a variety of animals as my youth was. The animals in my books, like those I imagined as a child, have human characteristics and find themselves in situations usually reserved for humans. I attribute my inclination to anthropomorphize to my animal-filled childhood and to my humorous father, with his tendency to create complicated lives and thoughts for even the most common insects.

My inspiration also comes from my childhood reading list, which included Black Beauty, Call of the Wild, The Wind in the Willows, Stuart Little, Doctor Dolittle, Charlotte's Web and the works of Dr. Seuss, among many others.

I loved to draw as a child and was always encouraged by my parents. They kept me well stocked with art supplies, and when my father's career as an Air Force pilot took our family to Taiwan for two years, they arranged for me to study with a Chinese brush painting master.

My Mother, a first-grade teacher, was keenly appreciative of the importance of art and creativity in her students' lives. She enlisted me early on to create drawings for her classrooms and to help with art projects. Her encouragement and my "career" as a classroom art decorator greatly contributed to my goal of becoming an illustrator. It gave me the confidence to keep trying, to go on to college as an art major, and finally, to move to New York--- a forbidding city to someone from the deserts of California---  to continue my studies. It was in New York that I discovered my calling as a children¹s book illustrator.

Twenty years and more that thirty  books later, I'm still in New York City. I live in a small apartment with my grouchy cat, Larry, who does not allow me to have any other animals (although an occasional spider does sneak into our lives). I have come to love and appreciate New York City, but I do try to escape in the summer and for holidays to Bozeman, Montana, our new family home. There I hike and ski and seek new inspiration.

Children's books address universal themes: love, friendship, jealousy, joy, sadness ---often in poetic, humorous, or profound ways. As all artist I am able to give my own voice to these themes by playing off the words and building on them from page to page. I am currently working on two very different books.  One is about a desert toad and is very suspenseful; the other is about a dog with an especially sensitive nose and is a bit sad, but also pretty silly. It is this variety that I love...that, and being able to integrate my artistic training with themes that have occupied me since childhood.

ALL CONTENTS ©2001 BY KAREN LEE SCHMIDT. ALL RIGHT RESERVED.
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Above Photo by Jon Nicholson