Artist Profile: Annik Dupaty
Annik Dupaty is a Black biracial illustrator who lives in Madison with her family and a beloved collection of Prince albums and Prince-inspired artworks. Although drawing was her earliest form of creative expression, she has been dabbling in photography, ceramics and painting her whole life. She has worked at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art for over 10 years, but is still regularly awed and amazed by human creativity—and wishes all children would be encouraged to express themselves through art. “My Imagined World: A Story Inspired by Prince Rogers Nelson” is the first book she's illustrated.
1) What are you most excited about in regard to the creative endeavors you're currently working on or are planning to start later this year?
Over the last two and a half years, I have been working on illustrating the children's book, “My Imagined World…” which was inspired by the musician Prince Rogers Nelson. It was released on April 13, 2022. Anyone who really knows me is aware that Prince has been a lifelong musical and creative hero. After a lifetime of drawing simply for my own pleasure—including often the famed musician in particular since he passed on April 21, 2016—this book was the first time that I’d been paid to work professionally creating artwork. It was an incredible learning experience. I had to research plus learn the many and varied steps of book illustration. Then after drawing each page by hand with pencil and ink, I had to master a new digital illustration app to color the scanned illustrations in addition to preparing the final files for the publisher. Right now the author Yolanda Everett (a fellow Prince devotee, teacher and dear friend) and I are both celebrating the completion of the project. We are thrilled that we were able to pay tribute to Prince this way. We are so excited to inspire children to use their imaginations, get creative and start envisioning the type of world they’d like to live in. Our current focus is getting the book into the hands of as many children and Prince lovers as possible! I have already been approached about illustrating other books—which is something I will certainly do in the future. But for now, my focus is on promoting this story.
2) Describe the collaborative process between you and Yolanda.
Creating this book together was really a beautiful journey. Yolanda had already successfully written and published one children’s book (“Peter and the Boycott”) about the civil rights era. In the fall of 2019 when Prince’s memoir “The Beautiful Ones” came out, Yolanda began to think about writing another book, this time about him. After we both read his memoir—and noted just how much future generations could learn from his example as an innovative musician, mentor, and philanthropist—we decided that we wanted to create a book together. As Yolanda was writing the manuscript, she would share inspirational images like cloud formations as well as verbal reflections with me. From there, I’d start sketching. Since she is based in Atlanta, GA and I’m in Madison, we had to have many exchanges by phone, Zoom, text and Facebook Messenger. One of the first parts of the process was developing the focal character: a young boy who isn’t meant to be Prince exactly, yet was inspired by creative children like Prince once was and my own son Nicolas. After presenting character studies, storyboards and initial concepts for each page, I moved into finalizing each illustration in pencil then ink. Once Yolanda signed off on the inked illustrations, I transferred each into Procreate. This allowed me to fine tune and color each page. Even at that stage there was a lot of back and forth— sometimes Yolanda suggesting edits to the illustrations, or me suggesting edits to the manuscript. It was really a collaborative process throughout.
3) Your professional life is centered in the arts. How does this affect the work you personally create?
That’s a great question. I’ve worked at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA) for almost 12 years as well as several other arts institutions and on other types of art-related projects. I think what I have learned from working with so many different artists and seeing so many types of creative output and expression, is that art can be a really powerful way to communicate what’s important to you. A part of me has always wanted to connect this perspective with my creative output in a way that may positively impact someone else’s life.
4) Please share 2 to 3 types of art or specific artists you wish people were more aware of.
I hope people never forget Prince by taking time to explore the breadth and depth of his music beyond just the top 40 hits. There are nearly a thousand songs to enjoy! More unreleased songs are still being discovered and shared by those who manage his estate.
As for musicians not enough people are familiar with, one in particular is Liv Warfield—she is a real powerhouse singer and songwriter who was part of Prince’s New Power Generation. She is one of the best living vocalists; her voice has unbelievable depth.
I also admire many different visual artists, but specifically, I wish people were more aware of the bounty of brilliant Black women artists in this country like Mickalene Thomas, Wangechi Mutu, Sonya Clark—and closer to home—Kierston Ghaznavi, Della Wells and Evelyn Patricia Terry, just to name a few. Finding out about other Black women artists around the world continues to delight me like a kid in a candy store.