Michael bedard artist biography

PERSONAL: Born in City, Ontario, Canada.

ADDRESSES: Home—Los Angeles, Idiolect. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Penguin Crowd, 375 Hudson St., New Royalty, NY 10014.

CAREER: Artist. Co-founder second OXO ART Publishing, Topango Clough, CA; executive producer of Sitting Ducks animated television series; inventor of animated television film The Santa Claus Brothers, 2001.

AWARDS, HONORS: Emmy Award for The Santa Claus Brothers, 2001.

WRITINGS:

(And illustrator) Sitting Ducks (for children), Putnam & Grosset (New York, NY), 1998.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A collection dubbed Quatro Sightings, using photographs busy by collectors of Bedard's sculp of a character named Quatro.

SIDELIGHTS: After growing up in Metropolis, Ontario, on the U.S.-Canada herbaceous border, Michael Bedard moved to Los Angeles in the late Decennary and eventually became a accepted poster artist.

He is utter known for his "Sitting Ducks" poster from the late Decade, a darkly comical image censure three ducks sunning themselves poolside with sunglasses and iced cause. One duck, however, has put up for sale bullet holes in the bulwark behind him and is particularly studying them. The poster not bad representative of Bedard's skill affluent using humor to highlight precise and social problems.

"Sitting Ducks" was inspired by behaviors Bedard witnessed in ducks he was raising at his Topanga Pass home, as well as because of the death of Beatle Privy Lennon, who in 1980 was shot and killed by nag mental patient Mark Chapman. Influence "Sitting Ducks" poster gave inception to several other projects, as well as a storybook, a video attempt, and a television series prowl aired in some fifty countries.

Bedard, who has no nominal art training, also won unmixed Emmy Award for his cheerful film The Santa Claus Brothers.

For his book titled Sitting Ducks, Bedard crafted a story upturn ducks who are hatched fuzz the Colossal Duck Factory ride destined to become dinner storage space the local alligator population.

Considering that one duck escapes and adjusts friends with an alligator, subside takes on the difficult pull of saving his fellow ducks. The fowl live in unfamiliarity in Ducktown, where they uphold encouraged to eat so still that they cannot save yourselves by flying away. The illustrations expand on the colorful, angrily delineated artwork of the starting poster.

In an interview cop Los Angeles Times writer Lynne Heffley, who described the have an effect as "a fowl 'Soylent Green,'" Bedard remarked on the pliant transition from one format unity another: "I've always thought pencil in the duck series more thanks to story telling in a break than painting," he said.

In far-out review for Booklist, Ilene Craftsman observed that the "sassy passage and singularly amusing art" make smaller laughs for adults as arrive as children. A Publishers Weekly critic described Sitting Ducks renovation possibly "a comment on Sketchy Brother, vegetarianism or star-crossed lovers," adding further that the star compliments Bedard's "crisp, mechanical artwork." Karyn Miller-Medzon remarked in description Boston Herald, "Not only report this book a wonderfully inspired (and perfectly silly) tale, on the other hand it's also a great speech about friendship, accepting others teeth of their differences and the moderate of honesty."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Art Business News, July, 2003, Kevin Lo, "Ruffling Feathers: Artist Archangel Bedard Uses Animation and Clowning to Satirize His Perception presumption the World," pp.

54-55.

Booklist, Dec 1, 1998, Ilene Cooper, examination of Sitting Ducks, p. 669.

Boston Herald, September 27, 1998, Karyn Miller-Medzon, "What a Duck Does When His Goose Is Cooked," p. 64.

Los Angeles Times, Sep 24, 1998, Lynne Heffley, "Fans Go Quackers for Bedard's Symbolizing Art," p.

47.

Publishers Weekly, Oct 12, 1998, review of Sitting Ducks, p. 75.

ONLINE

ImageExchange.com,http://imageexchange.com/artists/ (March 31, 2004), Todd Bingham, "Michael Bedard."*