(Re-)Introductions
(Re-)Introductions
An extended 'About'
Please allow me to introduce myself.
This post is an excuse to expand more informally on my About page. If we haven't met before: hello! And if we have met in some capacity in the past, hello again! Whatever our relationship, it's lovely to find you here.
I was born in Venezuela with the Caribbean only a short drive away from my doorstep. Growing up there meant learning to live side by side with chaos (in equal parts good and bad), so my idea of total peace manifested in three ways: swimming in the sea, reading, and drawing for countless hours.
Some photos from my camera circa 2004-2006 in Falcón and Margarita, Venezuela. Real Y2K energy and low-res of its time.
As living conditions in Venezuela got more challenging, my parents took the difficult decision to leave. I was fifteen years old when we arrived in Milton Keynes, UK, in the middle of February - a big shock to the system, as one can imagine. I didn't dare swim here for a number of years, and the switch to another language made me pause on reading for leisure; but I did continue to draw and began to seriously consider turning my love for it into some sort of career. One day I found an illustration annual in a bookshop, learnt what illustration meant, and instantly knew this was the path I wanted to take.
I moved closer to the sea (still didn't swim in it though) and graduated with First-Class Honours from the illustration course at the Arts University Bournemouth in 2014. Almost a year later, I started working at the Association of Illustrators while getting my first freelance commissions. Eventually I took the leap and moved to London in 2016, where I'm still based today. Ironically, it was here that I would finally rekindle my love for swimming.
As an illustrator I was always up for taking on a variety of briefs, but my character-focused portfolio at the time led me to work primarily on children's books. My first opportunity to do this came when Laurence King commissioned me to illustrate Isabel Thomas' Little Guides to Great Lives: Frida Kahlo. I was then fortunate to collaborate again with them, as well as with other publishers, to bring more non-fiction children's books to life.
The next few years were a very prolific time for me; by 2022 though, I felt I had been neglecting my personal practice and not pushing my artistic capabilities enough. I decided to take a commercial 'break' to figure out who I was at the time, and who I wanted to become. It was a slow, hard and chaotic process, but drawing once again anchored me - and, alongside it, I finally re-connected with a long-lost passion: reading.
Taking part in a 3-month long intensive course at The Royal Drawing School provided me with many breakthroughs during this time. Will write about it all soon.
The break allowed me to realise that I still valued personality, but it needed to extend much deeper than creating a few fun scenes or characters: it had to be rooted in feeling, atmosphere and stories. By 2025, colour pencils became my medium of choice and I overhauled my portfolio with new pieces created over the past few years. This new 'era' is now leading me into exciting opportunities which I can't wait to share fully with you soon.
I still continue to manage communications at the AOI part-time and occasionally go back to Bournemouth to speak to MA Illustration students (and swim if it's warm enough). I hold many versions of myself and, with them, many iterations of my creative expression. I think this is true for every artist. I still don't know who I want to become (who does??), I just know I want to continue challenging myself. Let's hope I can.
How about you? Where do you come from? Where would you like to go and what do you enjoy doing most now?
Header image: My partner took this photo of me sitting on top of Luke Chapman's wooden sheep in Great Linford Manor Park a few years ago. You can see another variant of the photo on my main About page.
