Alan Gilderdale,
perhaps best known as the illustrator of the Little Yellow Digger books, passed
away peacefully on December 12th after some months of deteriorating
health. He was 89 years old.
As the illustrator
of the Digger series, his work is found in well over three hundred thousand
homes, and a generation of New Zealand children have grown up with it. However
his life had many other aspects to it.
Alan Gilderdale
was born and grew up in York, England. He quickly developed a talent for art
and attended London University’s Slade School of Art briefly, before being
called up in 1942. As a conscientious objector on religious grounds, he undertook
his war service with the Friends Ambulance service, latterly in Italy. After
the war he returned to the Slade and completed his degree. It was there that he
met his future wife, Betty, and they married in 1949.
For the next
eighteen years, he worked as a lecturer, first at St Martins School of Art in
London, and then Reigate School of Art in Surrey, whilst exhibiting his work,
amongst other places, with the London Group. He was also active in the founding
of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament movement and was arrested during a sit-down
anti-nuclear protest. The family came to New Zealand in 1967 to teach at
Friends School Wanganui, before moving to Auckland in 1969. There he taught at
Ardmore Teachers College, the Kindergarten Teachers College and the Auckland
Technical Institute (now AUT), but increasingly concentrated on working as an
artist. He exhibited primarily with the New Vision Gallery, but was also well
known for the lithographic work he produced with Muka Studio. He won the Pump
House Awards in 1985, and the ASA’s Bledisloe Medal in 1989. His work is found
in a number of leading collections, most notably the James Wallace, Fletcher
and Goodman collections. Despite critical acclaim his modest nature meant that
exhibiting and self-promotion were anathema to him. Consequently his artwork,
which tended towards Jungian inspired mythological themes, remains relatively
unknown. It was his illustration, most notably for the Kotare series and then
the Little Yellow Digger series, that brought his work to wider public
attention, and mean that his art is a much-loved part of many younger New
Zealanders’ early experience. He frequently worked in partnership with his wife
of 64 years, Betty, whom he assisted in founding the New Zealand Childrens
Literature Association, and whose books he illustrated.
Although
professionally an artist, he was highly active in the Peace movement and was
one of the founder members of the New Zealand Foundation for Peace Studies,
which made him an honorary Life Member in 2011. He was a lifelong Quaker and
served as an Elder for many years within Auckland and North Shore Meetings of
the Society of Friends.
Alan Gilderdale is
survived by his wife Betty, three children, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
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