Padmacandra

Padmacandra: Illustrator of "The Tale of the Whale" from Karen Swann (author) & Scallywag Press:

My family moved a lot during my early years due to my fathers job in prisons.

When I was 6 we settled in the East Coast of Scotland off the River Tay and the North Sea. Our town was at the foot of the Sidlaw hills – what is known as a “thin” place between the land of men and the fairy lands. My father loved walking, so we were often exposed to wild landscapes.

I’ve always had a taste for words and images – for the power of imagination. But at first I didn’t consciously value this inclination, feeling I needed to develop more outward going traits. I decided against taking an offered place at Art School, and trained in social work instead.

My younger brother and I would sometimes wander the local streets searching for “Duggiland”, a place in which I suspected we - in some timeless “before” – had been Fairy King and Queen. No doubt influenced by my childhood reading, I believed in other worlds, in the possibility of doors appearing in walls with the right repetition of words or actions, of falling into another reality from the mundane.

As I grew, this thread went underground, except that in the margins of every sensible written page, little drawings would appear or lines of poetry. I paid little attention to these “doodles”, until, through my practice as a buddhist, I began to realise that such quiet voices might be trying to communicate something.

The first emergence of this was the writing of poetry, and, rather later than might be expected, embarking on an MA in children’s book illustration at the Cambridge School of Art, graduating in 2019.

I now live in a village on the edge of the fens in Norfolk UK, where I have converted my front room into studio. Illustration and writing feel at times like a natural expression of meditation/ awareness practices. I also work part time with the elderly.

My aspiration is to introduce children to the power of imagination – the possibility of wider and wilder worlds, beyond those we think we know.

If through my art and/or writing I can also communicate values of kindness and wisdom, I would be very happy!

www.padmacandra.com

www.instagram.com/padmacandrameek