Paula Rodriguez is a Mexican illustrator based in London, UK. Her evocative work takes inspiration from the landscapes and rich native customs of Mexico and Latin America, tracing the delicate intersection of place and memory. “To me, ancestral lands serve as portals into a spiritual world where the possibilities are endless,” she explains. 

Through oblique thresholds and uncanny doorways, her illustrations lead the viewer into an architecture of the psyche, dreamlike environments that toy with scale and perception. Her landscapes are devoid of human life save for a constant lone figure that haunts the precipice of each piece, a filmic reminder of our own insignificance in the vast face of nature. “I have always been a fan of cinematography, and how it’s able to convey a sense of limitless landscapes or spaces,” she adds.

Using gouache or acrylics, Paula approaches her work with a focus on colour, “colour is a huge part of my process, the colours themselves are the protagonists of the work.” She draws from a combination of family photographs and her own recollections of home, which collude to form a unique brand of magical realism. “My mum is a historian so I grew up with endless photographs of people and places from the past,” she says, “my own memories of home, some real, some invented, act as stages for me to play with ideas.”

For French illustrator Elodie Lascar, place is also a constant source of inspiration. Based in Marseille, her bold imagery is soaked in the dramatic light of the Mediterranian, women in bathing suits gather beside the pool or recline on the beach exuding a laid-back confidence. “The female form is a recurring subject,” she says. “My images are about the female gaze.”

As a child, Lascar found a catalyst for her creativity in comic books, as evidenced in her narrative illustrations. Working primarily in risograph print or oil pastel, she’s known for her sculpted and stylised imagery, restrained colour palette and prominent line work. Through lavish blocks of colour, and clever composition, her work transforms the everyday moments of life into theatrical representations, emotionally charged.

Before attending art school in Strasbourg, she spent her days working in bars, drawing customers and passers-by. These days, however, it's her family she’s been sketching. “I’m the one in my family who keeps all the pictures,” she says, “I always end up drawing them.” One work depicts Lascar’s mother at 20-years-old, smoking on a sunlit terrace, whilst another shows her aunt standing tall in a bathing suit. “She is very young here,” Lascar says of her mother, “I think I keep trying to go back in time by drawing these pictures over and over. It’s a kind of conversation between me today and her at this moment in her life.”