Leonard Filgate (born August 26, 1947) is an artist and illustrator, best known for the Rip Squeak children's books and merchandise he and his wife, author Susan Yost-Filgate, created in 1997.

Biography

Early life and education

Leonard Filgate was born August 26, 1947, in

San Francisco, California San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. At 16, he sold his first painting. After high school, he served in the

United States Merchant Marine The United States Merchant Marine is an organization composed of United States civilian sailor, mariners and U.S. civilian and federally owned merchant vessels. Both the civilian mariners and the merchant vessels are managed by a combination of ...

. In 1970, Filgate began a career as an artist and illustrator.

Career

Filgate is a self-taught artist and illustrator. Since 1970, he has created commissioned works for private individuals, projects for the

US Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...

, reproductions of Japanese screens, props for a

Warner Bros. Television Warner Bros. Television Studios, operating under the name Warner Bros. Television (abbreviated as WBTV; formerly known as Warner Bros. Television Division), is an American television production and distribution studio and the flagship studio o ...

series, and theatrical backdrops. From 1997 to 2007, he created and illustrated Rip Squeak. Filgate has illustrated five children's books and two arts books, which have sold over 500,000 copies to date. He has originals and prints are at the

Delaware Art Museum The Delaware Art Museum is an art museum located on the Kentmere Parkway in Wilmington, Delaware, which holds a collection of more than 12,000 objects. The museum was founded in 1912 as the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts in honor of the arti ...

Wilmington, Delaware Wilmington is the List of municipalities in Delaware, most populous city in the U.S. state of Delaware. The city was built on the site of Fort Christina, the first Swedish colonization of the Americas, Swedish settlement in North America. It lie ...

and the Good Samaritan Hospital in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. With a city population of 997,368 and a metropolitan area population of 1.95 million, it is ...

. He was the featured illustrator for the 2003 ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

'' Festival of Books, has been included in the

Simon Wiesenthal Simon Wiesenthal (31 December 190820 September 2005) was an Austrian Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter, and writer. He studied architecture, and was living in Lwów at the outbreak of World War II. He survived the Janowska concentration camp (la ...

Museum of Tolerance "Every Picture Tells a Story" traveling exhibition, had a major solo exhibition in 2005/2006 at the Delaware Art Museum, and is an artist member of the

Society of Illustrators The Society of Illustrators (SoI) is a professional society based in New York City. It was founded in 1901 to promote the art of illustration and, since 1959, has held an annual exhibition. Since absorbing the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (M ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

Marriage and children

He married author Susan Yost in 1979; the couple have a daughter, born in 1984.

Notes

References

DelartEvery Picture
*Sandra Leader, "The Magical World of a Carmel Couple," ''Central Coast Magazine'' (Summer 2002). *''Pirate Tales and Beyond: The Adventures of Rip Squeak & Friends'', Joyce K. Schiller, © 2005 The Delaware Art Museum,

*"An Interview with the Artist and Writer," ''San Luis Obispo New Times'' (December 2, 1999). *Sarah Seamark, "Rip Squeak: The Mouse That Roars," ''Art World News'' (August 2001). *Lisa Crawford Watson, "Meet Rip Squeak and His Friends," ''Monterey Herald'' (December 11, 2001).

External links

The Fine Art and Illustration of Leonard FilgateRip Squeak
1947 births Living people American illustrators Artists from San Francisco {{US-illustrator-stub