Artists We Love: Maria Lebedeva

INTERVIEWED BY Lindi Brownell Meiring

Joburg-based illustrator Maria Lebedeva is masterful at creating whimsical drawings. We caught up with her to find out what inspires her dreamy illustrations.

What’s your favourite thing about illustrating?

My favourite thing has got to be the fact that illustration is such a wonderful medium for storytelling. I love creating characters and scenarios and I try to tell a story through each of my illustrations.

Describe your aesthetic in one sentence.

Soft and layered mixed media mini-narratives.

What inspires your work?

I am very inspired by the work of other creatives. It’s very difficult to work in a vacuum and I find that I am so much more inspired to pick up my pencil after seeing what other illustrators are working on, and exchanging ideas with other creatives. Because I find it most interesting to illustrate stories and characters, I am also very inspired by simply observing people – a person in a funny hat walking their dog, an exchange between two strangers, a snippet of overheard conversation – can all lead to an idea for an illustration.

Which South African artist would you most like to collaborate with?

I am so lucky in the sense that I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with local illustrators I truly admire in a number of exhibitions. I would love the challenge of collaborating with an artist who works in a completely different medium. My list of desirable collaborations is quite lengthy, but the first person who springs to mind is Lucy Stuart-Clark of Lucy-Made. She makes the most whimsical ceramic creations, a medium which seems like alchemy to me. I would love to challenge myself to work in 3D, which is something I’ve never attempted before.

Do you have any exciting projects or exhibitions coming up?

At the moment my main project is my tiny person! Having him around has inspired me to work on a new range of prints specifically for kiddies, which I am hoping to start on as soon as possible. I’ve also recently completed a new range of greeting cards for Stuff From Africa, which will hit the shelves at Exclusive Books stores very soon.

To view more of her work, visit marialebedeva.co.za.