No artist has left a visual imprint on American Childhood the size of Dr. Seuss’s. For many of us, adolescence looks like a Seuss piece. Generally associated with a vibrant and moralistic catalog of tales, Dr. Seuss exists for many as a simplistic character in the imagination, akin to a Santa Clause. The truth is that Seuss was a complex and flawed individual who had artistic ambitions and thematic sensibilities that went beyond his children’s books.

Some of these specific flaws have come to public light this decade. The 2021 banning of six of his books, and vigorous calls for the censorship to go further than that, introduced readers to an uncomfortable truth: Seuss was a racist and a propaganda artist.

More surprising than this (and the topic of this article): Seuss was privately an artist of expansive formal talent. After a day at work drawing children’s illustrations, Seuss turned to his nighttime art. Sometimes referred to as the ‘Midnight Paintings’ or his ‘Secret Art’, these works were stylistically varied and topically mature.

Seuss never treated these paintings as work, which is why he waited for such a late hour to take them up. His wife has said that these paintings represented ‘another facet of himself–his private self.’ There are certainly works that turn an eye towards Seuss’s private struggles. Self Portrait of the Artist Worrying about His Next Book is one.

The palette of these works tends darker, towards blues and blacks. This stark shift is nearly overshadowed by the formal expansiveness they embody. Since their public release, experts have attempted and failed to classify Seuss’s works into any one stylistic category. Maximalism and cute formalism both seem to apply in certain cases, but Seuss practiced such a wide range of style as to make these works unclassifiable. Cat Carnival in West Venice leans expressionistic, while Cat Detective in the Wrong Part of Town is nearly cubist.

Close friend Maurice Sendak recalled that Seuss ‘didn’t give a lick or a spit for anyone’s opinion, one way or another, of his work.’ This stubborn independence, coupled with the intense privacy in which Seuss worked, does likely contribute to his versatility. The marketability of the works or voices in the Art World did not shape the work–only the artist’s taste did. In a cultural industry that can feel like A Plethora of Cats to an original artist, this is no small thing.

It turns out that Seuss’s taste was not always as bright and flowery as the world of his children’s books. Abduction of a Sabine Woman certainly isn’t all ages. Other Midnight Paintings deal with issues above the paygrade of the average six year old, who would be unlikely to appreciate the elucidation of a painting titled The Economic Situation Clarified.

Nudity and political complexity were not the objects of most of the Midnight Works though. In Cat From The Wrong Side of The Tracks Seuss gives expression to those demonic qualities that most adult humans are familiar with in their peers and themselves. Relaxed in Spite of It suggests the very adult activity of coping with disorder. Gosh! Do I Look As Old As All That? and Green Cat In Uleåborg, Finland Subway deal with aging and loneliness, respectively.

Taken together, Seuss’s Midnight Paintings show a different side of a man associated with positivity, bright colors, conservationism, and (recently) racism. They show a man anxious about his work and the world, attuned to the hypocrisy of the arts, and experiencing those human inevitabilities of decay and encountering evil. Made in privacy, they are a testament to the importance of artistic focus, isolation, and keeping that day job.