Illustrators are sometimes scoffed at by critics and artists. "Oh! He's an I-L-L-U-S-T-R-A-T-O-R! (sniff... sniff... pass the chardonnay!) I have heard both Andrew Wyeth, and Norman Rockwell, called illustrators in this way.

Original ideas are valued in art. So when someone else gives an artist the idea, and says, "Do me a picture to suit this," I am in agreement that the chances of it being a work of art are pretty slim. Many artists do illustrations for someone else's ideas for stories, advertisements, and so on. As far as I know both Norman Rockwell and Andrew Wyeth came up with their own ideas, but did them in a way that is sometimes termed illustrative. Webster's says that illustration helps in making something more clear. One of the things we are able to do, is understand the communications in both of these artists' pictures.

Before television, in my childhood (and sometimes even now) countless hours were spent looking at the magical, and thought-provoking illustrations of a series of twelve books, "My Book House", edited by Olive Beaupre Miller.

Stan Blodgett introduced me (figuratively speaking) to another great American illustrator, Dean Cornwell. I was fortunate to see some of his originals in a gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico... and they are wonderful works of art. I also admire N.C. Wyeth's and Clarence Gagnon's illustrations. We have all seen illustrations that are more art than some art will ever be.

I believe the issue, really, is more one of snobbery.
 

"The work of the artist - every bit as much as that of the statesman or clergyman - possessed a moral purpose. Art too, had an obligation to improve society, to cure corruption; to promote virtue over evil." (77)
(Susan E. Meyer, "A Treasury Of The Great Children's Book Illustrators")
 

"... art is not the exclusive property of any one form, and will not be hemmed in by arbitrary rules." (78)
Thomas Albright