Ethereal illustrations expand on a New York Times series by an acclaimed author and artist
Sunday Night Movies features Leanne Shapton's watercolors of resonant moments in black-and-white cinema. Selecting a brief fragment of each chosen film, she creates an indelible image that is both a hand-painted movie still and a personal response to a fleeting celluloid moment.
Together, the seventy-eight paintings create a valentine to the world of cinema. Shapton's journey through film history becomes a wistful celebration of the subtle moments in stories, which can often slip by unnoticed. What could be a simple title, still life, or portrait of an actor becomes both illusive and allusive through the medium of these personal paintings.
Shapton's bestselling Petit Livre book The Native Trees of Canada took a decades-old government catalogue and reimagined it, employing bold colors and stark shapes to represent familiar trees in their majestic glory. The book was a sleeper hit and went through multiple printings. With Sunday Night Movies she brings her love of film to light, and the effect is restrained and fanciful, familiar and all new.

Leanne Shapton's profile page

Leanne Shapton is an author, artist, illustrator and publisher based in New York City. She is currently the art editor at The New York Review of Books. She is the co-founder, with photographer Jason Fulford, of J&L Books. Shapton is a fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. She grew up in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. Shapton is the author of nine books: Toronto; Was She Pretty?; Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry; Native Trees of Canada; Sunday Night Movies; Swimming Studies; Guest Book: Ghost Stories; In Cars and Toys Talking, a children’s book. Swimming Studies won the 2012 National Book Critic’s Circle Award for autobiography, and was long listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2012.

Praise for Leanne Shapton

"[ Swimming Studies ] is brilliant, eccentric and moving-an immersion in a life." - The Guardian
"Pointillistic and quietly profound." - The New York Times

"Leanne Shapton is one of the most broadly creative and gifted people at work today; a true artist, both visual and verbal." -David Rakoff, author of Half-Empty