Illustrator Nominee: Ireland

Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick
Ireland, Illustrator

I drew all over my schoolbooks - they were so boring looking.

- Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick

Born in Dublin in 1962, Marie-Louise Fitz-patrick studied visual communication in Dublin's College of Marketing and Design. She then worked as an illustrator for school text-books and in the commercial field. Her first picturebook was an Irish language publication An Chanáil [The canal] published in 1988.This has been followed by eight more solo titles as well as books illustrated by other authors.

She works with a variety of media, including pen and ink, pencil, watercolour and acrylic paint, and stylistically her books show considerable variation. The realistic black and white pencil drawing of The Long March is quite different from her earlier work, and is used effectively to highlight the stark story of the Choctaw tribe's displacement and walk to a new homeland across 19th-century America.

Her next books were again for younger readers, and show the emergence of her distinctive style with increasingly minimal prose and a emphasis in the watercolour illustrations on the inner life of her protagonists. She also portrays feelings by the use of cinematic techniques and contrasts in scale, perspective and tone. An increasing emphasis on typography, design and layout in these books also plays a crucial role in creating and extending the narrative.

Her most recent picturebook, I Am I, is in contrast to the lighter watercolours of previous books. In this book, strong, saturated acrylics evoke a dry, cracked Australian landscape, Fitzpatrick's inspiration for the book, which provides a background for a story of conflict and ultimate resolution between two boys. The boys' aggressive words metamorphose into barbed wire and then into a dragon, but then their words of reconciliation become beautiful soaring birds.

Marian Keyes writes: 'Fitzpatrick's work to date demonstrates her versatility and development as an illustrator. In all of her books the illustrations decorate, extend and interpret the verbal narrative.'

Fitzpatrick has won many awards for her work, and is twice winner of the Children's Books Ireland/Bisto Award. She is currently working on her next picturebook and on a novel.