Perhaps not very well known is that Pat Andrea had a career as an illustrator before his paintings rose to fame . Interesting to know is that the strange atmosphere and surreal situations in his paintings have an origin and that origin is his many illustrations he has made during his life. In the Seventies a series of books by herman Pieter de Boer were published by Elsevier in which all illustrations were done by Pat Andrea.
The series was quite popular but the quality of the illustrations was realized by many after Pat Andrea had received a retrospective abroad and people could see the link between the illustrations and his larger scaled works. The series is hard to find nowadays ( www.ftn-books.com has it available) and for those that understand and can read dutch the stories are all excellent and a little bit like Roald Dahl short stories, but for all remain the illustrations within each volume. Each book contains approximately 25 illustrations all exclusively done by Pat Andrea and all specially made to fit the story. I love these illustrations, because in many of them one can recognize later subjects for is beautiful paintings. These books deserve to be collected.
