"I wanted to illustrate the books according to a notion of Alice's thoughts and views of the world, he says. You rarely see yourself in dreams, indeed you rarely see yourself at all! And I wanted Alice to be somewhat disembodied while she lay asleep among the field of daisies in her dream-like state. I thought doing without Alice would enable the reader to see the story with fresh eyes." John Vernon Lord
"There is hardly anything new to be said about Lewis Carroll’s two ‘Alice’ books. So much has been written about them. Their contents have been probed by the scalpels of psychoanalysts, literary theorists, annotators, enthusiasts and the journalists. Perhaps I should include illustrators among this group, for it is the illustrator’s duty to get to grips with the text and thus make a visual commentary upon it.
Readers of the text and viewers of the illustrations also make a book their own. Each one of us interprets stories and pictures in our own way and each one of us is unique. . . . [But] I think we have to be careful not to look for too many possible meanings that we might think may be lurking within the text of Carroll’s Alice books. It is very tempting to do so and many writers have done just that, sometimes disturbingly, often without evidence, and sometimes in a most delightfully illuminating way." John Vernon Lord
"I was absolutely thrilled to bits with it, it seemed to sum up for me at that particular moment my feelings towards surrealism, and that anything could happen ... The world is a very magical and possible place for all one's dreams and feelings." Charles Blackman
"Excited" is too small a word to describe my feelings about this project that miraculously found me. For the last few months, I've been working on a freshly-illustrated version of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". (An almost preposterous concept, for any artist - I'll be the first to say). It'll be published in Sept. 2015, this is simply a sneak peak at the dummy copy. I'll say much more about it, later in the year." Andrea D'AquinoA tiny glimpse of Andrea D'Aquino's version of Alice in Wonderland, to be published in September by Rockport books. I really love the 'surprise' statement excerpts on the page ends and the loose, abstract, splashy style of the illustrations in paint, combined with Andrea's characteristic use of collage. I'm really looking forward to seeing more.
"The book 'Alice in Wonderland' was made when I was staying in London few years ago. During my staying in London, I happened to see Lewis Carroll’s manuscript of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and John Tenniel’s original illustrations at the British Library, and this made me reread this all-time favorite classic. Rereading the Alice book as a grown-up reader was very intriguing: the nightmarish atmosphere and eccentric characters of the story fascinated me. Lewis Carroll’s Alice book is such an abundant resource, which evokes many issues in multifarious ways."
"I tried to produce a book that reflects upon subject matters like constructed illusions and realities and the dream-within-a-dream structure, which contains a circular regression and self-reflexivity. Like the epitaph of Lewis Carroll, Is all our life, then, but a dream?, these themes have been one of the eternal pending questions for us, and especially for the artists, who, in my opinion, are dealing with visual matters. I may say that Lewis Caroll’s book appealed to me in terms of illuminating the relationship between illusion and reality." Suzie Lee
