Gorey

 I loved the work of Edward Gorey, after I got Amphigorey as a present when I was young. I didn't think about him very much in the years since. Reading a biography of Frank O'Hara, I discovered he was a friend of Gorey's. That seemed appropriate. He also was active in doing cover art of books, including the comic poems by T.S. Eliot that later became the musical "Cats." 

He is a skilled draftsman, and possesses a gift for writing as well, with a mordant and macabre sense of humor, multi-layered intelligence. His visual style is the perfect vehicle for his somewhat twisted sense of humor. His characters often meet unpleasant fates, but we sense there is nothing truly mean about him.  I like the fact that he never condescends to his audience. He is not a children's author; if a young person likes his work, it is because that young person enjoys being spoken to as an adult. The Curious Sofa, for example, is a work of pornographic sensibility, though without anything explicit. It is all pure innuendo.    

While he seems to be eccentric, many people like his work, which shows that his aesthetic is not one that deliberately narrows its audience. Not everyone will like him, but quite a few of us do.