Leonard Everett Fisher

A Pulitzer Prize–winning children’s book author and illustrator, Leonard Everett Fisher turns traditional, narrative illustrations into enigmatic, open-ended artworks. He “approached most of [his] illustrated picture books as a painter,” he said, prioritizing his own creative drive and treating texts as inspiration rather than strictures. Fisher’s work often juxtaposes figures in motion with a still background, as in The Center Fielder, a painting of a baseball player catching a fly ball. Woven into the seemingly ordinary image is a reference to the second oldest secret fraternity in the United States, an allusion that imbues the work with a mysterious aura.