Illustrator Nominee: Finland

Virpi Talvitie
Finland, Illustrator

It seems to me unnecessary to draw only some familiar person or item doing something that is already exhaustively described in the text. It feels fun to begin illustrating if there is some kind of visual insight in the picture.

- Virpi Talvitie

Virpi Talvitie was born in Ilmajoki in 1961. She began her career as an illustrator by illustrating schoolbooks and magazines. She won awards for her work on schoolbooks and her magazine art featured in a number of exhibitions. In 1989 she was awarded a master of arts degree by the Department of Graphic Design at the University of Art and Design, Helsinki, and following on that she began to illustrate book covers and adult and children's books. She has illustrated books in a wide variety of genres, and most recently has started to illustrate classic Finnish fairy tales, creating characters with whom contemporary children can easily identify.

As her tools, Virpi Talvitie is fond of using oil pastels, which she sometimes combines with ink or watercolours. The airiness and freshness which are characteristic of her style are often gradually created by scratching through different layers of colour.

Talvitie not only wants to show what is in the text in any book she illustrates but also to add new nuances to the text. To Talvitie, illustrating means contemplation, visualisation and pictorial insight. She keeps working on the same picture until it achieves the atmosphere she wants. She wants to touch the reader's emotions and intelligence and produce aesthetic pleasure, in addition to pictorially narrating the story.

Virpi Talvitie collaborates with authors at all stages. A good example of her aptitude for collaboration is the children's book Keinulauta by Timo Parvela, which won Finland's most prestigious and valuable prize for children's and youth literature, the Finlandia Junior Prize.

Virpi Talvitie has organised dozens of illustration exhibitions in Finland and in Estonia and she has participated in group exhibitions of illustrators in Japan, Germany, Slovakia, Sweden and Estonia.