Teresa Lima: Portugal ⋆ Illustrator

"Illustrating is recreating a text, story or tale through images. It is penetrating an area of a very special and private sensibility; and there I found the answer to what I really enjoy doing."

Teresa Lima

Teresa Lima was born in 1962, in Lisbon, where she earned her degree in Painting at the Lisbon College of Fine Arts. She received a scholarship from Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (1998/99) for her illustrations for Gulliver's Travels. She has been a full-time illustrator of books for children and young adults since 1994, and also teaches visual arts at the Vergílio Ferreira school in Lisbon. Lima has served as a jury member for the Portuguese National Illustration Awards and has won many awards for her own work, including the National Illustration Award for Alice in Wonderland in 1998, and for Histórias de animais [Rudyard Kipling's Animal Stories in 2006. Her books have made the IBBY Honor List: A Cor das vogais [The Color of Vowels] in 1996 and A Cavalo no tempo [Riding on Time] in 2003, and Ovos cozidos [Boiled Eggs] was selected for the 2008 White Ravens list by the International Youth Library of Munich. Lima's art has been widely exhibited throughout Portugal, as well as in Paris, Lyon, Bologna, Frankfurt, Padua, Oxford, and London.

Through her skillful use of a variety of techniques and materials, Lima manages to represent the worlds suggested by the texts she illustrates. Her habit of focusing on particular physiognomic traits of the main characters, as well as her often-metaphorical recreation of the spaces allows her work to bring additional meanings to the words.

Lima is particularly aware of movement and action, and expresses them with a luminous fluidity and a naturalness that often stems from her use of mixed media, including painting, drawing and collage. Her subtle use of colors and textures adds to the dynamics of her art: bodies expand and are not intended to represent the human figure realistically; people and objects seem to dissolve into the scenes they inhabit; water-color movements suspend gravity and open the doors to children's imagination and dreams.