Natalia Rodrigues

Through my work as an educator I started observing how children create, how they represent their world, and how easy it is for them to make connections that us, adults, have forgotten. 

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I found myself slowly immersing myself  in this wonderful world with no rules and so many adventures to be had. I felt myself being pulled by it and wanting more.

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I kept an eye out on their drawings of fantastic faces, their ability to surmount any problems, their wonderful quirky personalities.... and I felt like I was also becoming a child again. 

 

It is very rewarding to make art with children. And that led me to think I wanted to go a step further and create art for children. 

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Since I was a little girl I always loved writing stories and making books, and after a short stint in the adult only world I found myself back there again, writing and imagining like there was no tomorrow. I started Illustrating my stories and playing around with some of the classics just for fun. 

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But as I embarked in an illustration MA in 2017, I discovered that I also felt comfortable illustrating for adults, and I kept slowly returning to my Portuguese roots of poetry and 'saudade'.  I have come to see that it is in the manipulation, the physicality of cutting and moving, and at times screen printing that I mostly thrive. Colour has become in the last few years very symbolic and I have gone back to the black and white of my photo lab, even when I illustrate. I believe my illustration path borrows many tools from photography and it is at times indissociable of this media.

 

I am interested in exploring  the boundaries of the illustration practice and its connections to other media, such as photography, installation and performance.