Stefanie Beyeler

Welcome to the first of my birthday week interviews. I am overjoyed that Stefanie is joining us today to tell us a little about her work. I am going to have to sing the praises of Flickr again because that is where I first saw Stefanie’s illustrations. I was overwhelmed by the staggeringly beautiful use of colour in these works and fell in love with Stefanie’s representations of various fabulous animals. Take a look at that Tapir and you will lose your heart too. Then I discovered the imperious, disappointed, grey toned women and knew that I had to know more. I think that I am the lady who “knows better” in the illustration below, I have an annoying habit of presuming that I am right, usually I am proved wrong. I am not wrong about Stefanie’s glorious work though, lets have some tea and enjoy her company.

Tell us a little about yourself, the media you work with and your creative process.

“I‘m a graphic designer and illustrator, living in Thun, Switzerland, with my boyfriend (also a graphic designer) and two cats. The picture of me above was drawn by my neighbour when he was about six years old and I absolutely love it. Grrr!”

“I have been drawing as long as I can remember, but had stopped doing it for a long while after artschool. I always knew that I wanted to be a farmer or a graphic designer. Now I‘m working mostly with pencil or color pencil on paper, cardboard or canvas. I often scan the stuff I‘ve made and then combine it in photoshop, push it around and change it, until it suits me. So I can still draw and paint very freely, that‘s important to me.”

“I love to create portraits of fictional persons and to think up stories about them. All my pictures are like portraits, no matter if they are people, animals or whatever. ”

From where do you draw your inspiration: music, books, people, nature etc?

“From all of them! I love books and our appartement is overflowing with them. They seem to grow in every corner. And we go to the library very, very often. Me and my cats favorite music is currently Cat Power, I love Jaques Brel forever and I listen often to a swiss radio station named Couleur3.”

“I go for a walk almost every day with my neighbours labrador. Now it‘s spring and he is in love all the time and I can‘t concentrate so much on nature around me, because I have to appologise to dog owners constantly. But I like to look at all the colors, twigs, stones, the mountains, clouds and the weather…”

“And I thank the internet for so much inspiration! I‘m so impressed with all the work I see on flickr or etsy, my computer is like a treasure box to me.”

If you could talk briefly about the background to one of your pieces which would you choose and why? Tell us the story behind the piece.

“Next week I will visit the Bologna Children‘s Book Fair to find an editor for the book me and my sister, a journalist, are working on. It‘s called “The Princess That Wouldn‘t Eat“. It‘s a fairy tale about a princess who becomes anorexic and then bulimic because her sister is so much more elegant and beautiful than herself. Here she has to kiss frogs, to try and cure herself. It doesn‘t help…I‘m quite scared of approching editors, but I‘m also very curious.”

I can’t wait to find out how Stefanie gets on at the Children’s Book Fair, I believe that she is there as I write. To read more about the story behind “The Princess That Wouldn’t Eat” you can visit the Prinzessinnen blog.
To explore more of Stefanie’s work you can find her in these places:

Flickr
Etsy
Blog

Thank you so very much Stefanie for being such a wonderful interviewee. I feel so spoilt already and it isn’t even my birthday yet. It is such a joy for me to sit at my desk and explore the wonderful work of the amazing artists I pester to answer my 3 questions. Who will it be tomorrow? I will give you a little clue. She is beautiful, brilliant, supremely talented, inspiring, beloved by so many, generous (I could go on here!) and has a predilection for snails. Oh, you know who this is don’t you! Do join me and my ‘secret’ birthday guest tomorrow. Have some tea at the ready and I will offer you a slice of the lovely Rose’s glorious strawberry cake. Just imagine how this tastes. Yum!