Caroline Magerl

Caroline Magerl; author, artist, illustrator and print-maker. Caroline immigrated to Australia as a young girl and spent the majority of her childhood at sea on her parents’ yacht sailing the east coast of Australia. This lifestyle accommodated little in the way of possessions, and so she especially treasured the East German picture books gifted her by her Great Oma; “the two languages of imagery and words whose interplay had a profound impact on me”.

Caroline now lives on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Australia.

“The emmigration forms for leaving Germany listed a number of potential destinations to begin a new life. By way of being quite certain, my father ticked each box. In 1966, my mother, father and I began the long flight to Australia. My first impressions of Sydney were the sea of brick red roofs and the unrelenting blue of the sky. The house we lived in was divided into flats for migrants and itinerants. With us were sheep shearers from the bush and a salesman, who instead of laundering would burn his business shirts in the backyard at the end of the week.

Perhaps it was proximity to the harbour, or his profession as a boiler-maker, that put the idea to build a yacht into my father’s head. Either way, the vision of a life at sea took hold and we moved to a fibro house with a boat-sized yard on the fringes of the Sydney. Quite soon the frames of a 45-foot ketch were laid out; a toast rack. My father smiled and pointed to the bow where my cabin would be and to where the fish would swim past my window. It took four years of weekends for my parents to complete the hull, cabins and deck. Somewhat sparse inside and without an engine or masts, the yacht was launched into the Parramatta River. It was named Rosa-M, after my mother.

My room had two round portholes, to see fish through.We explored the coast of New South Wales then travelled north to Queensland. The Rosa-M sailed all the way to Cairns, a city with lofty, sumptuously green hills topped by rolling clouds of mosquitoes. It was an exciting and also haphazard way of life, by the time I was fourteen I had attended ten different schools. The yacht was put up for sale a year later which heralded a difficult change for us all. After a brief stint in a hotel kitchen as a cook I enrolled in a commercial art course which initially led to freelancing work at various advertising agencies, and eventually a number of positions as a regular cartoonist for yachting magazines.

My time at sea was inextricably tied to my life and I continued to sail whilst pursuing my art career. After an ocean crossing to New Zealand in 1988 and a particularly memorable year in the Shaky Isles, I returned to Queensland where an altogether different way of life presented itself. This new way of life took the form of a ramshackle wooden worker’s cottage, which contained a reasonably attractive electrician. We married, and our daughter Jennifer arrived two years later.

BubWhat with the sleepless nights and the opportunity for introspection that early motherhood can bring, an old interest in drawing and writing picture books reared its head. My new goal of illustrating picture books took quite some years to achieve. After years spent drawing for educational publishers, newspapers and magazines, my first break in the children’s publishing industry arrived with Libby Hathorn’s Grandma’s shoes. This earned me the 2001 Crichton Award for best new talent in the field of Children’s Book Illustration.

A number of other illustration jobs followed. I had begun to find my feet in the publishing industry. One of the chief joys of my new life on land was having the space to work on larger canvases in oil paint and making larger and larger messes. I began to do fine art on the side. A chance meeting with a gallerist opened the door to showing and selling these new works. Ever since then it has been a juggling act between regular exhibitions and the illustrating of picture books. Hasel and Rose coverI have also tried my hand at writing and in 2014 my own picture book ‘Hasel and Rose’ was published by Penguin Random.

The theme of the book centers on a child’s experience of migration and finding courage to make a place for herself in a new world. That it took ten years to get 241 words down on a page has become a standing joke in the family. I made both stoatments and otterances when Doubleday in New York published ‘Hasel and Rose’ under a new title, ‘Rose and the Wish Thing’. While travelling through the States to publicize the book, I was invited to present a talk at the Mazza Museum in Findlay and give a workshop at the Eric Carle Museum. ‘Rose and the Wish Thing’ was listed by the Bank Street Bookstore as one of the best picture books of 2016. The inclusion of the original art of Hasel and Rose ( Rose and the Wish Thing) in the 2014 Illustrators Show at Chris Beetles Gallery in London was also a very proud moment .

I am very excited to be visiting the gallery again in 2018 to launch my new picture book, ‘Maya and Cat’, published by Walker Books (Maya and the lost Cat – Candlewick Press). I have not yet broken the news to my dog. My hope is to finish every scribbled, curly and half-baked scrap of story I have created, until I have a fine stack of picture books on my shelves. Books were among the most comforting and homely things I recall from my childhood travels, and it is ironic that writing and painting have been such an adventure in my adult life. I am very much looking forward to what is around the corner.”