I draw with a dip pen and Indian ink, and paint in watercolour. In the end, as everyone says, it’s quite mysterious. It’s always a struggle to find a balance. The key, I suppose, is finding symbols that seem to live and breathe.

Poetry, whether visual or verbal, depends on double meanings – on things being real and symbolic at the same time too much realism and the whole thing loses sparkle and sinks into dreary literalism too abstract and it lacks emotion, and feels too much like a formal exercise. I am fascinated by where stories come from – they sometimes seem to pop out of nowhere, but then I realise that they’re full of coded autobiography.

It’s optimistic, carefully structured and pretty – and not ego-driven. The patterns of folk art are the same all over the world – and the mindset of the folk artist is recognisably the same in every culture – it’s all about privileging the group and tradition over the individual – about celebrating what unites rather than divides, about making things beautiful rather than adding to ugliness. Visually, I’m inspired by folk art, outsider art and medieval art: pattern-making as a ritual – a magical diagram of the interconnectedness of everything. I like making patterns – story patterns, and visual patterns. A Letter for Bear is his first book with Flying Eye. Previously published by Candlewick Press and Andersen Press his books include Halibut Jackson, The Robot and the Bluebird and The Lying Carpet, a richly illustrated fable for older readers. David Lucas describes his drawing as ‘knitting with ink’ and his stories are a mix of myth, fairytale and autobiography.

Halibut Jackson by David Lucas