Artist Matt Schu Illustrates Children’s Books That Feel Hand-Cut From Light and Pape

Matt Schu is a children’s book illustrator and fine artist based in Portland, Oregon. He’s represented by Chad W. Beckerman at The CAT Agency for book illustration work.

Schu studied art and design at the University of Oregon, then worked as a graphic designer and editorial illustrator before shifting focus to book illustration and fine art around 2018. Since then he’s illustrated a steady stream of picture and chapter books, including “Cut! How Lotte Reiniger and a Pair of Scissors Revolutionized Animation,” “My Cat Does Ballet,” the “Cosmic Collisions” series with Dr. Marc Kuchner, “Star and the Maestro,” “I Know the Whale,” “The Tontine Caper,” and “The Islands of Elsewhere,” with the upcoming “Backpack Boy Berlin” also on his slate. His work on “Cut!” earned a starred review from The Horn Book, which praised his “exquisite digital illustrations” for their strong sense of illumination and depth, noting they suggest “a tactile quality, as if constructed from paper” — a fitting homage given the book’s subject, animation pioneer Lotte Reiniger.

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