With a deft touch for interesting faces and a unique collage technique, illustrator and artist Bryan Collier has drawn himself into a great career since reading “Harold and the Purple Crayon” and other books when young.

Raised in Pocomoke, Md., and a Harlem resident, Collier got started in art when he was about 15 years old and since then has won the Coretta Scott King Award and a Caldecott Honor.

Now an exhibit of his fascinating, moving illustration work has come to Texarkana until March 17 at the Regional Arts Center’s main galleries. Among his books are “Rosa,” “Visiting Langston,” “Martin’s Big Words,” “A Freedom River,” and “John’s Secret Dreams: The Life of John Lennon.”

Collier’s book “Uptown,” published in 2000, was the first he wrote on his own, and he focused on something he knew intimately, Harlem.

“Everything flows from one page into another. This is when he says Uptown is chicken and waffles,” said Bryan Phillips, community programs coordinator for the Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council, about the specificity shown in Collier’s work on “Uptown,” pointing to one of the illustrations.

Elsewhere in Collier’s “Uptown” series, brownstone apartments look like chocolate candy bars, giving us a young boy’s delightful viewpoint.

“All of the stories have a nice not only visual harmony but also a literary one,” he said.

“Little whimsical things like that just bring a lot of fun to it and just a lot of imagination and creativity. It’s such a great story,” said Phillips, noting Collier’s people are typically rendered in watercolor.

“Even though they’re a gesture face, you still get the shading of his beard, you get that cheek line, you get the brow ridge,” said Phillips. “So he goes into a lot of detail but it’s almost like an ideal stylized ... that’s part of the magic that he has. He’s incredibly talented.”

Another illustration in the exhibit is a compelling portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. inside a church with colorful stained glass lighting the background.

“This is such a beautiful, powerful image. It just embodies everything about Dr. King,” said Phillips.

Metaphors are commonly used in Collier’s work.

“Bryan Collier said that he loved the stained glass in this one because it has so many meanings to it. You see it in a church and it’s a way to tell the story of Jesus—that’s one method to it. And he also mentioned that it’s made of all of these individual glass pieces that come together to make this beautiful mosaic of an image,” Phillips said. “He also used that as a metaphor for all the individuals in a community coming together and uniting.”

Collier’s work for “Rosa” captures the spirit of Civil Rights pioneer Rosa Parks, following and picturing her day when she chose not to sit in the back of the bus.

And in “John’s Secret Dreams,” Collier pictures much of Lennon’s life from a youth who wanted to rock and roll to the older man who found domestic bliss with Yoko Ono.

No matter the subject, Collier’s work is colorful, thoughtful and inventive.



(The exhibit is free to the public. The RAC is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday with a 7 p.m. close on Thursday. More info: www.trahc.org or 903-792-8681.)