Nancy Ekholm Burkert 1933- Collection

Nancy Ekholm Burkert (1933- ) is an American illustrator of children’s books, and educator, having exhibited her work at the Brandywine Museum of Art (then, the Brandywine River Museum, 1982), The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art (2003), and The Museum of Wisconsin Art (2009). Burkert was born in Sterling, Colorado in 1933, however, was raised in Wisconsin, later attending the University of Wisconsin at Madison to study art. There, she found inspiration for developing her own style and methodology in the teaching and work of John Wilde, known for his exacting, fine draftsmanship, themes, and imagery evocative of magic realism and surrealism. Burkert meticulously captures the complexity and intricacy of figures, objects, and the natural world. The delicate linear quality she imparts to her illustrations through pencil, brush, ink, and watercolor media conveys a timeless, fantastical quality. The artist thoroughly researches her subjects using primary references and in-person experience to ground her drawings with the real world.

Publications illustrated by Burkert that established her renown as an artist are the memorable James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl (1961), The Fir Tree (1970) and The Nightingale (1965) by Hans Christian Anderson, and The Scroobious Pip (1968) begun by Edward Lear and completed by Ogden Nash. She is best-known and praised for her illustrated rendition of the classic, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: A Tale from the Brothers Grimm (1972), a New York Times Notable Book and a Caldecott Honor Book of 1973. She also illustrated an edition of Acts of Light by Emily Dickinson (1980) and both wrote the verse and created illustrations for Valentine and Orson (1989), which received a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award in 1990. Among her most recent works are Mouse and Lion (2011), a retelling of the Aesop fable, written by her son, Randal Burkert.