This illustration is inspired by the forest of Grand Belmont, one of my favorite forests in the canton of Fribourg. I saw a deer in one of my evening walks in this forest and felt like I needed to paint it. The whole scenery seemed surreal and magical, the deer popping out of nowhere, watching us for a while before taking of in the bushes.
The self care series of illustrations is inspired by my own wellness practices. They feature Bear – The bearer of wisdom, a bear who lives in Bern by the Aare river, he is a rescued bear, now living in captivity. Life forced him to learn how to manage stress, practice self-care and let go of the things he cannot control.
Illustration, gouache and watercolor on paper
Illustration, gouache and watercolor on paper
Winter is my favorite season and it is also the time of the year where I feel the most creative. Maybe we are programmed like that through millennia of evolution. Not long ago, women would spend the long winter days doing all sorts of handicrafts (weaving, sewing or knitting). Now we have Netflix and social media and we have replaced needle and thread with modern gadgets. Continue reading
When I moved to Fribourg from the overcrowded and suffocating place where I lived before, shared with almost 4 other million souls, I had the impression nothing much was happening…no Christmas rush, no over the top Christmas lights or a huge Christmas market.
I still have one of the toys that Saint Nicholas left in my boots when I was a child, it’s a mother gorilla stuffed toy holding a baby gorilla in her arms. I had named her Uga because at that time I thought she looked like the daughter of Ugo Fantozzi, an Italian series my mother was watching on TV. I gave it to Friboy a while ago and told him that it was from Saint Nicholas, he was shocked because he doesn’t picture me as a child. I am his mom, I couldn’t have been a smaller person that believed in magic and waited impatiently for Saint Nicholas just like him. He never reacted like this when I showed him photos of me as a child, this gorilla made me that little girl in his eyes.
I don’t know why I felt compulsed to illustrate this recipe. I grew up having mucenici [mûtʃeniːʃɪ], every year for the 9th of March and still bake them here in Switzerland. So it’s nothing special, unless maybe you’re not used to the idea of food offering because that’s what they are, an ancient relic of a pre-christian celebration of time renewal and the beginning of a new year for a pastoral population that kept a tight grip on its magical patterns of thought.
