Rapunzel

Paul O. Zelinsky, undoubtedly one of the most inventive and talented children's book artists, has once again created a distinctive vision for a classic story with unrivaled emotional power, spatial control, and narrative aptitude. His paintings convey a tale and have an impact that very few contemporary painters can match.Zelinsky's retelling of Rapunzel reaches back beyond the Grimms to a late-seventeenth-century French tale by Mlle. la Force, who based hers on the Neapolitan tale Petrosinella in a collection popular at the time. The story's major themes, according to the artist, are possessiveness, imprisonment, and separation rather than deprivation and punishment. As a result, the tower the sorceress provides Rapunzel is not a bleak, barren building of denial but rather one with opulent interior decor and ethereal outside beauty. The artist's use of color, light control, landscape, characters, architecture, interiors, and costumes to create a world that speaks to us instead of an ugly witch who cruelly imprisons a beautiful young girl is a powerful representation of a mother figure who fiercely opposes her child's inevitable growth and of a young woman and man who must fight in the wilderness to gain the independence that is the true beginning of adulthood.

Paul O. Zelinsky's writing as always, and yet in a manner that is both fresh and compelling, takes us on an exciting journey through the story's events while pointing us in the direction of the realities that have allowed it to survive.