It’s not easy drawing a creature that no one has ever seen. “They might have something to teach humans.”Īll the animals on Dinotopia are creatures that are extinct in the rest of the world. “Dinosaurs have been on Earth for over 100 million years,” Gurney said.

In Dinotopia, the humans are shipwreck survivors from various time periods and cultures, and the dinosaurs are the more sophisticated beings. In the real world, dinosaurs and humans never co-existed, because dinosaurs flourished 230 million years ago and homo sapiens has been around for only about 290,000 years. The city, perched in the midst of cascading waterfalls, draws on his on-location studies of Venice and Niagara Falls. “I figured I could come up with the world and invent the evidence.”Īmong the first Dinotopian locales he envisioned was Waterfall City, the island’s cultural center. “I take what I call the National Geographic approach to fantasy, because it has all the maps and details,” said Gurney from his studio in the Hudson River Valley. He honed his skills as an conjurer of imaginary worlds while working as an illustrator for National Geographic magazine on stories about archeological expeditions. Gurney, who earned a degree in anthropology before going on to art school, has been fascinated by dinosaurs and lost civilizations since he was a child. “It’s the level of detail and immersion in the story that brings it to life for everyone,” Plunkett said. The books include notes, diagrams, maps and drawings supposedly excerpted from Denison’s journals.

What sets Gurney’s work apart is his close attention to scientific accuracy - his dinosaur illustrations are based on the latest research - and detail, Plunkett said. Gurney’s artistic inspirations include golden age illustrators N.C. “Like all great illustrators James Gurney is a great visual story teller,” said Stephanie Plunkett, deputy director and chief curator of the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., which organized the exhibition. The books follows the adventures of the 19th-century explorer Arthur Denison and his son, Will, who were shipwrecked on Dinotopia, a utopian world dominated by peace-loving and cultured dinosaurs. The show contains more than 50 oil paintings, studies and maquettes Gurney created while writing and illustrating the popular series. It already exists at least in James Gurney’s Dinotopia books, a door to which has been flung wide in the exhibition at the Norton Museum. Imagine a place where humans and dinosaurs live compatibly side by side.

James gurney national geographic