Illustration

Personal Projects

Materials: Gouache, watercolour, ink and pencil

For this illustration project I selected scenes from the autobiographical novel Air Carnation,
by argentinian author Guadalupe Muro. She explores the theme of independence in love and writerly life.

The book is organised in different "worlds", which correspond to meaningful periods of her life.

Part 1: WORLD OF POSSIBILITY

"Pic&Puc lived in the forest in front of my house. They weren´t invisible, but I was the only one who could see them. They were my best friends and I walked everyday into the forest to visit them with Lulu. She used to walk in front of me and if I got lost I knew I had to follow her to get home. I never really got lost but often enjoyed thinking that I was".
Guadalupe Muro, Air Carnation ("Pic&Puc")

"Be a pirate. Travel to Canada in the fall to collect maple leaves and make a collage with them.
Be a volunteer at a refugee camp in Cyprus. Know Prague and Portugal. Embark on the Rainbow Warrior and go hunting Japanese whalers. De-oil penguins. Place an empty five-liter plastic bottle inside the toilet tank so that less water is flushed. Become president and give food to everybody...."
Guadalupe Muro, Air Carnation ("Dreams")

Part 2: WORLD OF WORDS

"Love is a very complex species whose members are difficult to find (...)
Love is born and love dies, and its existence, like that of everything else, is uncertain."
Guadalupe Muro, Air Carnation ("Love")

Part 3: WORLD OF ART

"Without knowing where I was, I turned a corner and found myself in front of Van Gogh´s "Sunflowers".

I started to cry. I cried a lot. (...) I spent my childhood looking at photographs of paintings in books, like an employee in a photo shop who spends the day developing photographs of other people´s vacations."
Guadalupe Muro, Air Carnation ("On the Edge of the Pond")

Part 4: THE NEW WORLD

"At first our home was so big that inside it was a road that crossed large fields, some of them full of cows, but it gradually became a tiny house in which, instead of apple trees and vineyards, objects started to grow. Each cup and fork, each sheet and chair became silent guardians."

Guadalupe Muro, Air Carnation ("How I Brush my Teeth")

"An urgent need to write was calling me back to the wild. But instead of writing I sat again in the cinders in a forgotten corner of the house, this time staying very quiet like a hurt animal waiting to heal. I knew very well that writing shows no mercy. So as proof of my loyalty, I laid my voice on my lover´s pillow, like a warm hunted bird."

Guadalupe Muro, Air Carnation ("Loyalty")