A slight change of pace for Day 6, as we interview artist Lois Cordelia about her work on the Birdbook series and her stunning live demos.
Here’s a taster!
Kirsten: Who are your major artistic influences?
Lois: My major artistic influence has been children’s illustrator Jan Pienkowski (born 1936, in Warsaw), in whose West London studio I have worked part-time as an artist’s assistant since the days of my GCSE art reference project (1999). Jan is best known for his Meg and Mog series, and for his pioneering pop-up books, including Haunted House, but he has also created many volumes of silhouette illustrations with a strong fairy-tale emphasis. His intricate silhouettes were originally hand-drawn, until I began cutting them out for him, based on his drawings, using a scalpel.
The most valuable thing I have absorbed from working so closely with Jan all these years is not the knowledge of art techniques, but rather his eccentric, sometimes completely ‘crazy’ approach towards art, and more generally towards life.
Most refreshing of all is his attitude towards so-called ‘mistakes’: Jan does not believe in mistakes. When something has just gone horribly ‘wrong’, he exclaims: “Wait! Maybe it’s better like that!”
You can read the rest of the interview here on Lois’s site.
Category: Lois Cordelia
Birdbook 2: Freshwater Habitats
It’s here, and it’s packed. Featuring the work of:
Derek Adams, Anthony Adler, Rachael Allen, Carmen Ashworth, Andrew Bailey, Jo Bell, Emily Berry, Zoë Brigley, Sue Brown, Sam Buchan-Watts, Erika Bülow-Osborne, Mark Burnhope, Gerry Cambridge, Phil Cooper, Lois Cordelia, Sarah Coulston, Lorna Crabbe, M. P. Dean, Chris Emslie, Charlotte Geater, James Goodman, Luke Heeley, W. N. Herbert, Alexander Hutchison, Kirsten Irving, Andrew Buchanan Jackson, Valerie Josephs, Gregory Leadbetter, Alice Lee, Ann Leighton, Anna Le Moine Gray, Laurens Leysen, Ira Lightman, Rachel Lovatt, Sophie Mayer, John McCullough, Ian McLachlan, James Midgley, Harriet Moore, Siân Moore, Sarah Morrish, Sarah Ogilvie, Richard Osmond, Kate Parkinson, Abigail Parry, PopiRouge, Samuel Prince, Vidyan Ravinthiran, Erica Read, Julia Colquitt Roach, Christos Sakellaridis, Bethany Settle, Jon Stone, Katy-Rose Thorogood, Claire Trévien, Jen Wainwright, Alexis West, Chrissy Williams.