By Carol-Ann Hoyte
Like the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, the Stratford Festival is a place where stories are showcased and celebrated, and so it seems fitting that it was at this event that a particular illustrator was brought to my attention.
In a case of three degrees of separation, my sister’s friend, a costume and set designer, who worked at the festival in its 2022 season, told me that her friend, also a designer, is married to an artist who turned out to be Ken Daley.
The illustrator hails from Cambridge, Ontario, but now lives in Kitchener, Ontario. He has roots in the West Indies, as his parents are from the island nation of Dominica (not to be confused with the Dominican Republic). Ken’s art is inspired by his West Indian heritage and he has exhibited his work in Canada, the US, and the Caribbean. His artwork can be found in numerous private and public collections.
"ART IS WHAT I AM."
From as far back as he can remember, Ken was certain of one thing: he would live his life as an artist.
He remembers being in second grade and knowing that art was something towards which he gravitated. He recalls an art class assignment in which students were asked to create a puppet, and he made one from a paper bag of the late American musician Prince, reflecting the look of his Purple Rain era. The illustrator calls this his “aha moment,” when he discovered he truly loved creating art.
Ken’s parents recognized his artistic talent and sought opportunities to nurture it. At the age of 10 or 11, they enrolled him in art lessons, some of which were with none other than Richard Comely, co-creator of Canada’s homemade superhero, Captain Canuck.
Ken graduated from Humber College with a degree in architectural technology and worked in that field while continuing his art. He then chose to focus on his art full-time and acknowledged his desire to go to art school. He studied art at Central Technical High School and benefited from an initiative in which the government paid for his tuition during his three years of study there.
“It was a very intense program: life drawing, painting, illustration, graphic design, sculpture. It gave me a well-rounded way of becoming an artist and developing and honing my skills.”
He graduated with honours from the school in 2003 and has been working full-time as an artist ever since.
BREAKING INTO CHILDREN'S BOOKS
Ken got married and moved to the US in 2010, where he and his wife bought a house. At that time, his attention was more focused on renovating their home and less on creating art.
Then opportunity came knocking: the illustrator received an email from Annick Press, whose staff had come to know him from having spotted some of his pieces at festivals.
“They really gravitated towards my Caribbean-inspired pieces because they loved a lot of [their] colour, feel, and style."
Though the publisher thought he was the perfect fit to illustrate one of their picture book manuscripts, Ken was initially nervous and hesitant about accepting the assignment as he had never illustrated a book.
The publishing team relieved his concerns, encouraged him to ask questions, and supported the new illustrator throughout the process. In 2017, Annick published Ken’s first book, Joseph’s Big Ride (written by Terry Farish).
“I loved the whole process of collaborating with the author and also with the art direction and capturing the vision of what the author wanted in the book. I love working on creating images for each page because I always see them as individual compositions”.
ILLUSTRATOR'S MEDIUM
Ken illustrated his first two books by hand, working with acrylic paints on illustration boards. He recalls that for his second book, there were two scenes he had to repaint. When he was creating illustrations by hand, he would produce huge illustrations measuring 20" x 30", which would take a lot of time to create.
These days, Ken creates most of his artwork digitally. He made the switch to working this way as it simplifies working with art directors when they ask for changes to be made to spreads.
ALL THAT JAZZ AND RESEARCHING HISTORICAL FIGURES
As a great lover of jazz, Ken asked his agent to keep him in mind for any stories featuring jazz musicians. When That Swingin’ Sound! The Musical Friendship of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong came across her desk, she knew Ken would be the perfect person to illustrate it. He shares that it was cool to meet the author, Rekha S. Rajan, who is also a jazz aficionado. “She did a lot of research on the lives of Ella and Louis and shows in the story”.
When working on books that feature historical figures, Ken says, “I really do a deep dive to make sure I’m pretty accurate in how I depict the characters and how I depict the scenes”. While working on That Swingin’ Sound, he used Google to compile a collection of hundreds and hundreds of pictures of Ella and Louis from all different positions and also of where they had lived. There is one part of the story where he needed to depict New Orleans. When Ken lived in Mississippi, he would travel down to New Orleans, where he took photographs that would later inspire the illustrations. “It was great to be there [New Orleans] to actually feel the culture, to feel the vibe, and hear the music”.
WITH THE HELP OF AN AGENT
Ken wasn’t represented by an agent when he started his career in the kidlit field. In fact, he wasn’t even aware of the possibility of having one. After his second book, Auntie Luce’s Talking Paintings (Groundwood Books), was released, he worked with an agent who had approached him, but it didn’t work out.
While living in Rhode Island, he found representation with The CAT Agency, which is based in the US and still represents him. “It’s been great. It really has skyrocketed my career as a children’s book illustrator. Having an agent really does help.” Ken has illustrated more than 20 books so far, with some published in Canada and others published in the United States.
STORIES INSPIRED BY MEMORIES
To date, the books Ken has illustrated feature stories that depict different aspects of Black life.
“I wanted to centre Black life and all the different iterations of it. We [Black people] are not a monolith. We have different aspects, different ways and even different cultures within being Black, and so I wanted to capture that in all the different books that I do.”
Barbershops, for Black North Americans, serve as communication cornerstones where folks socialize, discuss current events, stay abreast of cultural happenings, offer support, and sometimes even engage in political activism. Ken illustrated the picture book, Saturday Morning at the ‘Shop (Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster, 2025), the debut title of Black Minnesota author-teacher Keenan Jones, with which he pays tribute to barbershops.
Ken recalls, as a kid, getting his hair cut in Toronto, and his fond memories of this served as his inspiration for the book’s artwork. “I loved going there because it was an extension of our culture”. His father would take him to the city’s Bathurst Street, where there were many barbershops (and hair salons), as Cambridge, Ontario, didn’t have barbershops skilled to serve the hair care needs of Black patrons.
Though the author wrote the book based on his Indiana childhood experiences of going to the barbershop, Ken incorporated a few elements to highlight aspects of the Bathurst Street barbershop scene with which he became acquainted during his youth.
SCHOOL VISITS INSPIRE
After touring in 2024 for the CCBC’s Canadian Children’s Book Week, Ken has been doing more school visits. He believes that his school visits are occasions of particular significance for children of colour because they have the opportunity to see someone who looks like them being creative through art.
“It really sparks an idea in them like ‘Hey, I draw, I paint, I can do this too. I can create stories, I can illustrate children’s books as well when I’m older.’ [It’s] just representation, seeing someone who looks like you doing what they would love to do.”
TIPS FOR CULTIVATING THE NEXT GENERATION OF ILLUSTRATORS
Ken suggests ways that parents can support children with an aptitude for art. They can foster their creative spark by enrolling them in drawing classes and “bringing them to museums and galleries so they can get to see other styles of work and to inspire them.”
POSTERS AND NEW WORKS
In 2025, there was demand to feature Ken’s art beyond the page. The CCBC selected him to illustrate the theme “Your Story Matters” for its Canadian Children’s Book Week poster, and he also illustrated the poster for the Festival of Literary Diversity’s Kids Book Fest in his role as the event’s illustrator-in-residence.
It’s been nine years since his first book was published, and Ken shows no signs of slowing down. What works can we expect to see next from one of the busiest illustrators in the kidlit biz?
Beyond Beautiful Black Boy (Orchard Books/Scholastic), which will be out in April 2026, the illustrator has multiple projects in the works, including Morning Monday at School (a companion to Saturday Morning at the ‘Shop) and a book about Stevie Wonder. There is also How Do You Spell Belong? about a little Black boy with autism who visits the museum with his dad, and Go Slow, written by Calgary author Yewande Daniel-Ayoade, is in the conceptual stage.
To learn more about Ken’s work visit kendaleyart.com or follow him on Instagram at Instagram.com/kendaleyart.
Carol-Ann Hoyte is a published children’s poet and works as the Events and Program Manager at the Canadian Children’s Book Centre.