Behind the Canvas by Alexander Vance

While touring her local art museum, tween Claudia Miravista catches a glimpse of a boy in the background of a painting. That same boy reappears inside a painting in Claudia’s bedroom. The boy’s name is Pim and he tells Claudia about the world behind the canvas. Long ago a group of magical artists—known as Artisti—crafted a parallel dimension where their oil paintings could truly come to life. In the 1600s, Pim was cursed by an evil Artisti, Nee Gezicht, who trapped him inside this world using his will to fuel her power. With the help of another Artisti, Claudia is given an ointment to help her enter the oil painting dimension. Claudia’s mission is to stop Nee Gezicht by breaking her magical staff which will finally free Pim. But when Claudia enters the oil painting world, it is not at all how she imagined.

Behind the Canvas is a fun fantasy adventure with some very unique world-building. Vance creates a new dimension where all the oil paintings in the world collide creating an ongoing panorama of color, style, and vibrancy with a cast of some very familiar faces. However, there is a major downside to this story from the start because Vance’s world-building is based on such important visuals. Any reader who isn’t familiar with all the artists or styles mentioned in the story could easily feel lost in Vance’s narrative. What is the Fireside Angel? What does Cubism look like? Vance tries to “fix” this by including footnotes explaining artists or artistic movements. However, this doesn’t help readers to truly visualize the world Vance created, no matter how good his written descriptions are. This problem could have been resolved by including actual images or placing QR codes inside the narrative for readers to follow, like in The Van Gogh Deception by Deron Hicks. This would have solidified Vance’s world building and help teach readers art history in a unique way.