INTERVIEW - Cynthia von Buhler Revisits The Shakespeare Oracle

Though Cynthia von Buhler is currently touring to promote her critically-acclaimed children's book, But Who Will Bell The Cats?, she still has fond memories of the insane month which she spent churning out paintings for A. Bronwyn Llewellyn's sumptuous Shakespeare Oracle in 2003. In this wonderfully candid interview, von Buhler relates some of her experiences as a flourishing author, illustrator, fine artist, and possible descendant of the Sforza family. Read the interview...

Tom Blunt: So you told me earlier that this wasn’t exactly a collaborative project in the sense that people might assume, is that correct?

Cynthia von Buhler: Yes. I never spoke with the author. I did not have any say in who was chosen for the cards, and I depicted them any way I chose.


TB: How large are the paintings?

CvB: They were about five by seven inches. I tended to do them really quickly. I had one month to paint all of the cards. This is why I chose to do them as small oil paintings. I had to do one every ten minutes! It was rough. I wish I had more time on them. It was a tremendous amount of work in a short period of time. I would have liked to make them all huge 3-D paintings, but I would still be working on them now. They were a little bit larger than the actual cards -- but they’d at least by the right size if you wanted to read someone’s tarot with them. Originally I thought I could sell [the paintings] as a whole deck that someone could use, but then I started selling them individually because I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to buy the whole thing. It would be quite expensive!


TB: I think that there are probably many artists and illustrators who would probably like to do a deck, but the idea of spending that much time to do each card exactly the way you want it would just be overwhelming. It would probably be much easier as a collaborative project.

CvB: I actually did that once -- worked on a deck of cards, like an actual deck of cards. It was basically four artists, and I was given the hearts. So I did all the hearts!


TB: Sounds great. What is that deck called?

CvB: Oh, it wasn’t called anything, it was just like a deck of playing cards, done for a promotion for some company -- I can’t even remember which company. It was lovely. Even doing just all of the hearts that was a lot of work. But I did do them 3-D, and I actually used pig hearts, but then they ended up thinking that was too scary, so I ended up using milagro hearts, you know, like the Mexican milagros that you nail on.


TB: That 3-D component seems to be a vital part of your other artwork.

CvB: Well usually I make things that are 3-D, but when I don’t have a lot of time I still do 2-D paintings. I don’t normally work so small either, I work quite large. So I was really pumping these [cards] out -- I went to my parents’ house in the Berkshires, and I just sat there at the table and was a one-woman factory.


TB: Were there any particular paintings in this deck that you felt a special connection with? Or that you would have wanted to spend a whole lot more time on?

CvB: Definitely… The Queen, and the Fool. The Hanged Man. There are a few of them that were my favorites, that I actually still own the paintings. And I still have the cover. I actually painted Shakespeare a few times, for a few different projects, and I really like painting Shakespeare. I have very strong opinions about Shakespeare and how to represent the person. You’ve heard the whole thing about how Shakespeare may not really be Shakespeare?


TB: Oh yes.

CvB: Yeah. I don’t really think Shakespeare was Shakespeare.


TB: The first time I looked at the Hanged Man, I felt like you’d put special love and attention into that card.

CvB: Yeah, I liked that one. And I really did a lot of research. This was a while ago, you know, but I had to really immerse myself in the plays and study them.


TB: I can imagine so.

CvB: Luckily my mother reads the cards and knows a lot about them, and gave me a lot of input. Sforza was my grandmother's maiden name (on my mother's side). She was from Italy and rumor has it that we were related to the famous Duke. Leonardo DaVinci painted his mistress and also did his plumbing. In Italy the Sforza name is like Rockefeller or Kennedy in this country. And my mother actually had that deck, the Sforza deck, and showed me that. I think if I had more time I would have liked to make my deck look more like that one -- older and more decayed looking. I just love that deck, it’s so beautiful.


TB: I love using it too, I have the one that’s inlaid with the gold plate or whatever. It really is beautiful.

CvB: And also the cards were large. And they were strong cards, they weren’t flimsy.


TB: What kind of input did your mom give you? What did she contribute to this?

CvB: Oh you know, if I had a question about what a card meant, she would explain it. And explain both sides of it, you know, all of the cards are both good and bad. She would just explain it to me, and you know I didn’t have a lot of time so I really just had to know a quick answer. What does this card mean? You know, I don’t read them myself. Obviously I’ve had them read, I’ve had my cards read many times -- although my mother doesn’t like to read our cards. Superstitious!


TB: Did you give her a deck of these cards?

CvB: Oh, of course. They did actually send me a decent number of the decks.


TB: That must have been very exciting for her.

CvB: I think she really liked it. But she gets very involved in all of my projects. My mother is actually quite artistic herself and I think that she kind of lives through me in some ways. So now when I work on books now as an author, when I work on children’s books, I always send my stories to my mother to give me input on what children will like. I don’t have children and she’s had a lot of children, our whole family had six children.


TB: When did you start writing and illustrating books?

CvB: My major in college was actually children’s books. And my minor was fine arts. When I finished college I had a book I was showing around to some of the publishers and I just couldn’t get any interest in it, so I started doing illustration for magazines and books. And that led to working with Houghton-Mifflin, doing many, many covers for young adult books. Then they asked me if I had any of my own stories, and I said, “Yes, I have many.” And then from there I started doing my own books. So I actually illustrated a few children’s books before I was given the chance to write my own. It’s a really hard field to break into, but once you’re in, you’re sort of accepted. But it’s also very hard to be and illustrator and then have them take you seriously as a writer.


TB: Yes. I can imagine that writers who can’t illustrate their own work would feel threatened by that. I think as wonderful as it is for anybody who has multiple talents and can do so many things, there’s always a flip side to that, trying to gain acceptance as one thing or another when you can actually do both.

CvB: Right. Also, with my book, I created the sets in 3-D and then I photographed them. So I really like to do everything -- because I’m a little control freak and I like to have control over the whole project. So it was really hard illustrating other people’s stories, because they weren’t necessarily how I would have wanted the stories to go. And I also think that it must be very hard for the writers to just be given an illustrator. They really don’t have -- unless they’re at a very high level -- any input in how books are illustrated -- not even the cover. So I like to have control over the whole project. In my contract I actually made it so they have to hire my designer, who I’ve been working with for a really long time. He really knows how to design my art. And it’s such a big part of it, the design, even things like choosing the paper. The coating on the paper, the typography, it’s all really important. And a lot of times when you’re working with a publisher, it’s just sort of whatever they give you.


TB: How excellent. So the fact that you never spoke with the author on the Shakespeare deck isn’t particularly unusual then; considering the work that you’ve done you’ve probably had a lot experiences like that.

CvB: I actually have, and it always sort of baffles me. And I always sort of feel bad for the author. You know, many times I’ve sort of illustrated a book cover and afterwards they’ve called me and said, “Oh, I love that!” Usually I wind up talking to them after the fact, and hopefully they like it. Usually they seem to, but I’m sure that they don’t always like what I came up with! In some ways it would be helpful to talk with the author. I think with the Tarot deck it probably would have been helpful, but that in some ways it would be horrible -- I think that sometimes the author could get in the way. Because the best art comes when you have the most freedom.


TB: Exactly. Once the floodgates are open for input to go input to go back and forth, then where does it end?

CvB: And also, when it’s someone who isn't used to working with an artist, that’s a disaster. You know, with an art director or an editor who was worked with many different artists, I think that they know how to talk and know how to deal with artists and I really honestly feel the more freedom given, the better the artwork. But you know, I actually did a project with Martha Stewart -- I illustrated one of her stories, and I never met her. I still have to talk to her about it, I don’t know if she likes it.


TB: Ultimately, if an author doesn’t like the way it’s come out, I’d hope they wouldn’t blame the artist. It seems like an grievance they’d have with the publisher instead.

CvB: Usually it goes well, so I think publishers know what they’re doing. I think there’s a good reason why they keep those two things separate. And so many people I know who want to do a book, they think they need to come at it with an illustrator in hand, and that’s totally not the case. If you’re a writer, they just want you to show your writing, you don’t need to find someone to illustrate your work.


TB: I think that must be hard for any writers to accept, because I think visualization is such a key part of how you write a story, so I imagine they just want to go into it offering as clear an impression of their work as possible.

CvB: Are you also an artist as well as a writer?


TB: Not in any meaningful way. I’ve done a lot of art and design work, and I’ve had some art shown here in the city, but it’s not my main way of expressing myself. I don’t think I have the chops to make a Tarot deck all by myself, for example. So, tell me a little more about this possible family connection to the Sforza family!

CvB: Well, as I said, my grandmother’s maiden name is Sforza, so my whole life we’ve always talked about how our family comes from the Sforza family. And my family is very fair, we’re actually almost Sicilian… Calabrian? And we’re very fair-skinned -- blondes, redheads. Which is unusual for that area, though actually not quite unusual, because the Vikings came through and raped and pillaged. But still we say, “Oh we’re fair because of the blue-blood connection, and he married a Polish woman and you know, whatever.” I never really looked into it to find out if we really truly are related to the Sforza family, but we have the same name so it’s likely at some point it goes back to that family. The funny thing is that side of the family was possibly involved with the mafia.

It’s actually a very sad story, because when my grandmother came to this country with her husband, and I guess somehow they had a speakeasy -- her stories about the speakeasy were really interesting -- and an ice truck. Who knows what they were doing with the ice truck, if they were delivering alcohol or whatever during Prohibition. One day my grandfather went to collect a debt and he was shot. And that same day that he was shot, my grandmother, who was pregnant, gave birth to my mother. So my mother was born on the same day that her father died. It’s a pretty intense story, and I’ve been meaning to go back and research the murder. I think it’s kind of fascinating -- you know, why was he murdered? I guess it wasn’t really explored...?


TB: Yeah, especially because by the time these stories are passed down to other people, everybody has sort of imbued them with their own narrative and made it into a personal story, so often the facts turn out to be really surprising.

CvB: Right. I’ll say to my mother, “Yeah, you know it sounds like the mafia,” and she says “It’s not the mafia, he wasn’t in the mafia, he just went to collect a debt!” It’s like, Mom, he just went to collect a debt? Come on. You’re in the Bronx during Prohibition, dealing in alcohol and fireworks.


TB: You talked to me about the Visconti-Sforza deck. Are there any other decks that you really admire?

CvB: You know, when I did the research I looked at many, and it astounded me at how many decks there are. Some of them are really beautiful and some of them are kind of haphazardly put together.


TB: I keep forgetting that this was a while ago for you.

CvB: I know, I’m so sorry. I probably should have gone back and done a little research and pulled my files before I talked to you. I have a whole file, I did a lot of research, and I did look at a lot of decks. You know I actually had to have a lot of these paintings that don’t have the characters on them. That’s another thing, I would have loved to have characters on all of them.


TB: Yeah, I have to say I was initially disappointed when I first heard that the Minor Arcana cards didn’t have characters of their own. But now I think that the inclusion of quotes for each card is a really brilliant idea because it really provides a memorable hook for each one.

CvB: Exactly. Okay, my four most favorite cards that I had to illustrate were: The Emperor, The Empress, The Magician, and the Tower.


TB: There are so many different kinds of scenes portrayed here. Some are just portraits but others are like little action scenes. So you really do get a glimpse of a full range of your painting style, because you wind up having to do different things to make each card stand out.

CvB: Right, and there are little details on a lot of these cards, whether it be a rabbit or a bird or something in it, and it all has meaning for that card. So when I was doing my research I tried to get all of the symbols in. To try and assemble things which have something to do with this character or the card.


TB: I know you didn’t choose who would appear on which card, but at least it appears that A. Bronwyn Llewellen put a lot of thought into them.

CvB: Right, right. I definitely think she did. I agreed with a lot of her choices. Most of the choices I thought were pretty good and the connections was actually pretty interesting. And I really was able to just do whatever I wanted as far as the imagery, which was good. I’m looking at the cards now. Oh, the Hermit. I do like the Hermit.


TB: The Hermit really surprised me because I was expecting someone like Prospero to show up in the Hermit card. At first when I saw Caliban instead, I thought, “Wow, I don’t know if I really get that.” But within seconds I recognized it as a bold choice and a beautiful picture, and so I thought, “You know, rock on, that’s amazing.” And then when I saw Prospero on the Temperance card instead, I thought, “Well now I have nothing to complain about. It all comes together.”

CvB: It was really fascinating. You know, that’s one of the things that I like. I do fine art as well, but one of the things I really like about being an illustrator is to learn about things. You know, I will get an assignment to do something and it’s something I may not know too much about, but I learn because I have to research it, and it’s just fascinating to me. I think you can probably tell from my cards and see what I was looking at when I painted them. You know, I was probably looking at certain decks and thinking “Oh, I really like this,” and then steal an idea here, steal an idea there.


TB: The fact that the backs of cards are mostly black seems to give them additional weight. They just look more mysterious. And the background on a lot of the Trump cards is a black night sky.

CvB: If you look at the card carefully, it’s not just blacked out. It’s actually painted, you can see the texture in it a little bit. I like it that they didn’t just use the black ink.


TB: You’re right, I’m looking at a card right now and I can definitely see it.

CvB: I wanted the texture to show, because that’s the one thing I really liked about the Sforza deck. I really loved the texture of them, and I wanted my deck to have that. I got excited because the publisher said I could include a 3-D element in the cover illustration, the picture of Shakespeare. My parents have this tiny Old World globe. And I wanted to have that kind of floating in front of him -- a real globe floating in front of him, like he’s levitating it.

So I had my parents send it to me, and it never actually got to me! You know, I couldn’t find it, and I had this really horrible, evil landlord in my loft. Well, later I found the box in the hallway of my loft, so I think that my landlord stole the globe! He was just a horrible man and he stole my globe. I know he stole my globe. So they’d said I could use the 3-D on the cover, and I was going to do it, but then I didn’t have the globe so I couldn’t do it. I was just looking at the cover and I was just remembering that and how mad I was when he stole my globe.


TB: That’s terrible. I guess you’ve still got a tribute to the globe there on the cover, except for every time you look at it you’re just going to remember how that guy stole your globe.

CvB: Yeah, it’s true. Later I found one somewhere else, so I just bought it and thought, “Okay, I’m just gonna keep this around. Someday when I need a globe for a painting, I’ll have one.” But you know I was on such a tight deadline at the time that I didn’t have time to go and find another one. I had to just to not do it. But speaking of thieves. He reminds me of certain evil characters.


TB: [Laughs]

CvB: He’s like an evil character from a Charles Dickens novel. Or like a troll!

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