Иллюстрации художника помогли ветерану армии преодолеть депрессию и создать новую книгу

In early 2024, Winsome Bingham was in a VA hospital in upstate New York receiving treatment for severe depression. The award-winning author and Army vet, who was born in Jamaica, served in Afghanistan in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm, where she sustained a traumatic brain injury after being hit with a rifle. Since then, she’s dealt with depression, anxiety, and PTSD. “I hadn’t written anything in months,” Bingham said. “I was in a black hole. I didn’t have any creativity in me.” While in the hospital, Bingham received an email from Caldecott Honor artist Jason Griffin, with whom she’d previously collaborated on The Table. The email contained screenshots of some paintings—of tulips, guitars, the sky—pieces that Griffin had made but wasn’t sure what to do with. He asked Bingham to look them over and tell him if they sparked any story ideas. Those abstract images led to the making of On Fridays (Holiday House/Porter, Sept.), a reverse-engineered picture book based on Griffin’s paintings. The book—a meditation on loss, community, and found families—helped Bingham through her depression. “I cannot talk about this book and not cry,” Bingham said. “Jason’s artwork found me when I was at my lowest point.” Griffin, a native of Maryland, estimates that he spends 45 to 60 hours a week in his studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, working on projects. “I call it mad scientist mode,” he said. “I like to maintain a sense of play, exploration, and discovery.” In 2024, Griffin invited his agent, Elena Giovinazzo (while at Pippin Properties), to his studio to brainstorm ideas for new projects. Giovinazzo gravitated to some small paintings, the size of playing cards, that Griffin had arranged on a table. “They spoke to me,” Giovinazzo said. “They were melancholy but joyful.” Giovinazzo encouraged Griffin to send them to Bingham. “Normally an artist has to wait for the right manuscript to be sent their way,” Giovinazzo noted. “We just said, ‘Well, let’s try this and see what happens.’ ” Bingham—whose picture book Missing Momma (Abrams, 2024) explores PTSD—had limited use of her iPad in the hospital. She was in an art therapy room when she received Griffin’s email, which had been forwarded to her by her agent, Hannah Mann at Writers House. It was Bingham’s first email in weeks. In the room, across from where she was sitting, was a guitar, leaning against the wall. It looked like the guitar in one of the images. Bingham felt it was a sign. “The colors of the artwork—the pinks, yellows, and blues—were the light I needed,” Bingham said. “I immediately saw something.” Over the next week, Bingham wrote On Fridays, the tale of a boy, Jamar, who makes regular visits with his mother to an assisted living facility, where she works and where he befriends the elderly residents, one of whom dies. The author composed the book during breaks between therapy sessions. She wrote in the cafeteria, on worksheets, construction paper, and napkins. Griffin—whose other collaborations include My Name Is Jason. Mine Too. with Jason Reynolds—said it was fun to send Bingham his paintings and see what they inspired in her. “Trust is an important part of collaboration: to let the person have a genuine reaction and not try to control the experience,” he said. After Bingham wrote the manuscript, Taylor Norman, editorial director at Neal Porter Books, asked Griffin to create additional art, including portraits of the characters. Griffin embraced the challenge. The artist has a tradition of painting memorial portraits of people in his family who have died (“It’s a way to immortalize them,” he said). He produced a series of intimate portraits for the book inspired by the family members of people in his own life. “I was on a mission,” Griffin said. “If I was going to do portraits, they needed to come from somewhere true, from a real place.” Norman was blown away by how the story and art interconnected. “What I love about Winsome and Jason is that they don’t settle,” Norman said. “Winsome is an amazing force. Jason breathes out art.” For Griffin, the studio is a place of hope and possibility. “I’m an eternal optimist and I probably have about 15 ideas a day,” he said. “Art is my oxygen mask.” With On Fridays, he and Bingham reimagined the usual way of making a picture book—and developed something remarkable together. “Getting that artwork was transformative,” Bingham said. “It flipped something in my brain.”