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ILLUSTRATION FAIR

Clare Davis is a UK based illustrator who has always harboured a love for drawing. After completing a work placement in the advertising field, she found herself increasingly drawn to the visual component and went into commercial illustration. After gaining professional experience, Clare completed an MA in illustration at Falmouth University to finesse her craft. “I love editorial art and the simplicity of children's picture books,” she told Cluster, “storytelling in any form is an amazing skill.”

Her illustrations feature evocative environments, from forests and jungles to cityscapes of places like Santorini, New York and Cadiz. Through loose, impressionistic strokes and rich colour choices, Clare captures the quintessential spirit of each location. “Environs are all around us,” she explains, “most of the time we don’t even notice them.” Her place-inspired works are inspired by her own travels, an attempt to recall the essence of each city without being tethered to exact representation. “When I travel, I take a lot of photos. I don’t do a lot of location drawing, but use these photos as a guide for quick line art that forms the basis for my illustrations,” she continues, “I like to distil the event like this to avoid getting bogged down trying to replicate the image.”

Accordingly, her process is an intuitive one guided by three simple steps; line work, re-line work then colour. It is in these core elements, Clare insists, that her stories are captured. “The image tells the story through line work and colour, it’s up to the viewer to decide what they see, and it’s always interesting to see if that translates,” she added.  Through Cluster, she has found space for her art to thrive, “I don’t think you can create great work in isolation,” she told us, “it’s been great sharing what I do and listening to others.”  Currently, Clare is hosting a series of free art classes at a local hub, she hopes to encourage others to believe in their innate creative ability, adding (reassuringly) “not every work you start will end up being a Picasso!”

“Illustration has always been my favourite way to tell stories through my art,” explains Mayu Furutani, a Japanese artist who is currently studying 2D animation at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Like Clare, many of her illustrations focus in on place, from the markets of Paris and alleys of Rio to the balmy back streets of Tokyo and the Big Apple’s glistening skyscrapers. “My interest in the urban comes from my upbringing,” she explains, “I spent my whole life in big cities so crowds and big buildings are familiar to me.”

For Mayu, beauty is something that perpetually surrounds us, whether we choose to seek it out or not. “Urban life is filled with duality, complexity and juxtaposition, and I really like it for what it is,” she told Cluster, and this sentiment is evident in the way she captures the vibrancy, bustle and pace of city life through sweeping splashes of colour and busy composition. “My creative choices are mostly quite intuitive, I’d like people to look at my work and find a part of themselves in it,” she added.

Each new illustration is usually triggered by something she’s encountered in her own life, whether that be a film, book, thought or feeling, person on the street or even overheard conversations. Working from a combination of memory and photo reference, Mayu’s work retains a similarly impressionistic quality to that of Clare. Though she mostly works digitally, she still enjoys haptic methods like good, old-fashioned doodling with pen and paper.

Both Clare and Mayu evoke the breathless rush one experiences when encountering a new place for the first time. Through their expert use of colour and liberating sleight of hand they demonstrate what any seasoned traveller knows first hand; that what you’re left with, after the journey, is much more than just an image; it’s the sounds, smells and most of all spirit of each place that lingers on in our minds and hearts.

Work by both Clare and Mayu can be viewed on the Cluster Illustration platform
and purchased through our Cluster Illustration Online Shop.

Thank you for reading,
Stephanie Gavan & Cluster Team.