Call For Entries: Small Tales: Works Inspired by Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist best known for her books for children featuring animals, such as those in The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

Potter’s artistic and literary interests were deeply influenced by fairies, fairy tales, and fantasy as well as a love of landscape, flora, and fauna, all of which she closely observed and painted. She studied book illustration from a young age and developed her own tastes, first choosing to illustrate traditional rhymes and stories such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Puss-in-Boots, and Red Riding Hood, but most often her illustrations were fantasies featuring her own pets: mice, rabbits, kittens, and guinea pigs.

Potter wrote about 30 books including the popular stories about Tom Kitten, Peter Rabbit, and Jemima Puddleduck. The immense popularity of Potter’s books was based on the lively quality of her illustrations, the non-didactic nature of her stories, the depiction of the rural countryside, and the imaginative qualities she lent to her animal characters.

Artists’ works for this call for entries should avoid imitation of Potter, but rather take inspiration from fairy tales, fantasy, or personal stories important to the artist, should include an illustrative quality, and speak to the storytelling nature of Potter’s illustrations. All media, themes, and emotional styles will be considered.