Jan Brett lives in a seacoast town in
Massachusetts, close to where she grew up. During the summer her
family moves to a home in the Berkshire Hills.
As a child, Jan Brett decided to be an illustrator and spent
many hours reading and drawing. She says, "I remember the special
quiet of rainy days, when I felt that I could enter the pages of my
beautiful picture books. Now I try to re-create that feeling of
believing that the imaginary place I'm drawing really exists. The
detail in my work helps to convince me, and I hope others as well,
that such places might be real."
As a student at the Boston Museum School, she spent hours in the
Museum of Fine Arts. "It was overwhelming to see room-size
landscapes and towering stone sculpture, and then moments later to
refocus on delicately embroidered kimonos and ancient porcelain,"
she says. "I'm delighted and surprised when fragments of these
beautiful images come back to me in my painting."
Travel is also a constant inspiration. Together with her
husband, who is a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Jan
Brett visits many different countries, where she researches the
architecture and costumes that appear in her work. "From cave
paintings to Norwegian sleighs, to Japanese gardens, I study the
traditions of the many countries I visit and use them as a starting
point for my children's books."