Brian Pinkney

The son of Jerry and Gloria Jean Pinkney, Brian Pinkney was born in Boston in 1961. Both his father, an acclaimed illustrator, and his mother, an author, milliner, and silversmith, had their own studios at home. The Pinkneys did not pressure any of their four children to become artists, but focused instead on sharing the joy they found in art, music and literature.

For Brian Pinkney, art has always been a family activity. "When I was a child, my mother would pull out paper and we'd all start drawing. Soon drawing came to me naturally. My mother often found me in the corner drawing and would say, 'Wow, that's beautiful. Go show your father.'"

Eventually, Pinkney had his own studio, which was a converted walk-in closet, where he could do his art. This included sculpting figures out of pipe cleaners and sketching robots along the margins of his homework. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1983 from the Philadelphia College of Art, where his father had also studied. After working as a freelance illustrator for several years, he returned to college, earning in 1990 a Master of Fine Arts degree in illustration from the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Working as an illustrator for a magazine art department, Pinkney met his wife, Andrea Davis, who was a magazine editor and writer, and the two were married in 1991. Besides the numerous other books Pinkney has illustrated, he and his wife have created nine picture books, from Seven Candles for Kwanzaa (1993) to a series of biographies of famous African Americans, including Duke Ellington: The Piano Prince and His Orchestra (1998). The 2000 Coretta Scott King Award is just the latest of the awards Pinkney has received, which include three Coretta Scott King Honors and two Caldecott Honors.

Related Exhibitions: Father and Son (2002)