Lucille Clerc

From her communal London studio, this French illustrator is exploring the interaction between urbanisation and nature – and wants to take us along for the ride, as REBECCA BRADBURY discovers

- REBECCA BRADBURY

You might think you’re familiar with the story of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, but you’re probably yet to experience Lucille Clerc’s fantastical interpretation, brought to life in her illustration of the same name. It’s a place where mythical creatures, tropical birds and larger-than-life plants awaken at night, transforming the V&A, for which it was drawn, into a garden like no other.

Dreamy, delicate and infinitely detailed, Lucille’s work combines the familiar with the out of this world and, as a result, dismantles our perceptions of reality. Think intricate depictions of buildings, butterflies, blooms and everything in-between, distorted in scale, kaleidoscopic in composition, and transfixing with an ethereal colour palette of soft pinks, dusky teals and emerald greens.

Then hidden beneath the surface, but just as interwoven, is the concept of time. As an antidote to today’s fast-paced news cycles and ever updated content streams, the illustrator places prime importance on the longevity of her work, adding a multitude of subjects into a single piece as a way to build up a relationship with the viewer.

“A lot of what we see right now are simplified images,” she says. “They are very quick, and they have to be easy to understand. I do that for commercial work and there’s a reason and it’s valid. For my personal work I have a longer time with the viewer, so I like to hide little details so you can look at the images again and again.”