Scott McKowen is a prolific scratchboard illustrator who has established an international career specializing in theatre affiche and volume covers. Click any epitome to encounter a larger version.

The title grapheme in Tony Kushner and Jeanne Tessori'south musical Caroline, or Change is an illiterate black maid in 1963 Louisiana. Scott used the phases of the moon as a metaphor for the changes in club brought nigh by the ceremonious rights movement. (The moon is also a surreal opera-singing character in the story!) The moon behind Caroline forms a subtle halo effectually her head — a kind of blessing or benediction that she'southward non fifty-fifty enlightened of. Poster for Tantrum Theatre, 2017.

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Front end and back cover illustrations for Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise by the Cuban-American writer Oscar Hijuelos. The novel is based on the real lifelong friendship between two of the about famous men of the 19th century — Mark Twain, and the African explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley. Years earlier Twain started publishing stories, he worked as a steamboat airplane pilot on the Mississippi River. Published past Hachette Volume Group/One thousand Primal Publishing, 2015.

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Portrait of Miguel de Cervantes for the comprehend of a 2014 Alumni Magazine from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. Cervantes was a contemporary of Shakespeare but we have no idea what the author of Don Quixote actually looked like, and so Scott was costless to pick a model who he imagined Cervantes might look like. Christina proposed the idea of making his ruff into a volume fantasy — leave it to a theatre designer to turn a 17th-century costume detail into a literary reference!

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Three illustrations (from a serial of l) for A Number of Things: Stories of Canada Told Through Fifty Objects by Jane Urquhart, published by Harper Collins in 2017, Canada'south sesquicentennial year. Jane's essay about the Fire Roses Flour sign in Montreal is near the history of language in Quebec. Lester B. Pearson's Nobel Peace Prize Medal was awarded in 1957 for his diplomatic genius. The lighthouse at Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, was built in 1923 on the site of Canada'southward very commencement lighthouse in 1734.

Affiche for Silence: Mabel and Alexander Graham Bell by Trina Davies, a world premiere at the Chiliad Theatre in London, Ontario, in 2018. Bell is famous for inventing the first practical telephone, but his new device was of piddling use to his wife, Mabel Gardiner Hubbard, who was profoundly deaf. Calorie-free is used in the staging of the play as a visual equivalent for sound — darkness is silence — so the poster prototype is a portrait of Mabel disappearing into silhouette.

SILENCE

David Davalos's play Wittenberg is a modernistic spin on Hamlet and assumes a basic familiarity with Shakespeare. Village is a senior at Wittenberg University and can't make upwardly his mind well-nigh declaring a major. He studies theology with Martin Luther and philosophy under Doctor Faustus; and he's the star of the varsity lawn tennis squad. Poster for The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, 2014.

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Two posters for Bernard Shaw's Misalliance in which afternoon tea at the country manor of underwear tycoon John Tarleton is interrupted when an airplane crash-lands in the conservatory, and the handsome young airplane pilot runs off with Tarleton's girl, Hypatia. The plane is a gift from GBS to poster designers. The bird's-eye perspective of Hypatia and the pilot chasing each other through a hedge maze was the poster for The Shakespeare Theatre of New Bailiwick of jersey in 2015. For the Pearl Theatre Company's New York Metropolis revival in 2009, we are looking upward at some fancy acrobatic skywriting.

MAZE

Skywriting

Cover analogy for Reading Children'due south Literature: A Critical Introduction , a university textbook published by Bedford St. Martins in 2012. To convey the magical way that books tin can capture a kid'due south imagination, Scott created an illustration with thelight source coming from the pages of the book. The surreal objects flight up from the volume are based on the chapter numerals in the text, which represent the themes in each of the twelve chapters.

Hintz

Wicked is Gregory Maguire's best known novel — it's an imaginative, revisionist history of the characters created by L. Frank Baum inThe Sorcerer of Oz. Other Maguire novels have on Cinderella, Snowfall White, and A Christmas Ballad by Charles Dickens. Maguire asked Scott to create the encompass for his near recent novel — Hiddensee is a fantastical biography of Drosselmeier, a main character in E.T.A. Hoffmann'south The Nutcracker. A die-cut window in the dust jacket provides a teaser view of a surprise second illustration, revealed when the reader turns dorsum the outside layer. The type was hand-fatigued as part of the scratchboard engraving.

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The Crocodile from Peter Pan (with the warning clock visible inside), from the Sterling Classics edition, published in 2008. Scott based this illustration on a sketch fabricated from life in the reptile house at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris.

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Poster for The Merchant of Venice at The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey in 2017. San Giorgio Maggiore is sparkling on the horizon; below that is a wreck of coins and caskets — a reference to Antonio's ships thought to have been lost at sea.

VENICE

A serial of crèche illustrations from a personal Christmas carte series depicting the characters in the Nativity story in contemporary dress, as if they are everyday people yous might run into on the street.

Comprehend illustration for Pinocchio , published in 2013 in the Sterling Classics series. This book was a childhood favorite of Scott's so this was an especially enjoyable assignment.

Pinocchio

Seana McKenna played Lear in a 2018 Groundling Theatre Company production in Toronto. Changing Shakespeare'south paternal relationship with royal daughters to a maternal story is an bold pick — Lear's outraged "I gave you all" takes on deeper meaning when spoken by a mother to her child. The gender shift was signaled on the affiche with an overhead "heart of the tempest" view of Seana, naked and curled into a fetal position, with a mad glint in her eye.

LEAR

Affiche for The Bungler , a lesser-known play by Molière, at The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey in 2017. The principal character is a love-struck and dimwitted young man who is constantly "putting his foot in it," ruining a series of the elaborate schemes devised by his crafty valet to win a young lady. Scott was looking for a comic pratfall, and remembered a cartoon past Francisco Goya of a human tumbling down a staircase — and used that scenario every bit inspiration for rhis illustration.

BUNGLER

Encompass illustration for a volume of xx-five stories past Edgar Allen Poe, published in 2010 in the Sterling Classics serial. The graveyard scene is based on sketches and photographs Scott made on a visit to Highgate Cemetery in London. Interior black and white illustrations included "The Tell-Tale Middle," "The Pit and the Pendulum," and "Some Words with a Mummy."

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Gregory Maguire's fantastical novels all feature a double cover or dustjacket — a die-cut window in the outer encompass shows a tiny section of an inner comprehend underneath. When the reader pulls dorsum the outer cover, a surprise 2nd illustration is revealed. Scott illustrated the covers forSubsequently Alice, Gregory'southward have on Lewis Carroll's famous heroine.

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