Maja Celija

Susanne Sandström

Who is Maja Celija?

Maja Celija is a slovenian born, croatian grown up and italian formed illustrator. Somehow I find myself with three alter ego characters. In Slovenia, where I lived as a child, I have many memories from my childhood and they crush me whenever I’m there. In Croatia I graduated from elementary and high school and I still have all my family there. This is the place where I am a daughter, a teenager and still can’t understand why everyone is so grown up? Italy takes me back to the present. Here I studied and formed myself as a professional illustrator. Here I am a mum and wife.

How did it all began…how and why did you start making art/illustrations?

Remember how I always loved to observe the characters in the picture books that my parents brought to me. Sometimes I was disappointed about how the story ended and about the destiny of the characters. This was a great occasion to take a paper and redraw the story on my own.

I’m still quite obsessed about looking outside and finding the relations and similarities between things, animals, humans, plants.

What does your (creative) working process look like? What techniques and tools are important for the process/do you use most often (and why)?

Everything begins with reading the text of the story that I’m going to illustrate. Or thinking about the theme I have to develop, in the case of silent picture books. During this process of the work I make some very small sketches just to feel the rhythm and the composition. It’s the first approach with the story. Then I enter deeper, in the bowels of the story, finding myself there like I’m acting a part. So, I became one of the characters and can dialogue with everything that surrounds me in the story. I start to make bigger sketches with characters and settings and compose the storyboard. For the realization of my illustrations I usually use acrylic colours , but I recently worked with mixed technique.

Where do you get inspiration from? What are you influenced by?

I’m inspired and influenced by everything I see, hear, listen, read, remember.

Challenges? On an individual and Market level - Which are they?

I’ve graduated from I.E.D in Milan [Istituto Europeo di Design ] where I’ve studied illustration and later graphic design at C.F.P Bauer. After this period I’ve started to work publishing for some magazines and sending my works all over the illustrators competitions. Milan days were very exciting for a young illustrator. In that period I also took part in some important exhibitions like the Bologna Children’s Book Fair illustrators exhibition. After Bologna, the Illustrators exhibition moved to Itabashi Art Museum of Tokyo.

Members of an japanese gallery appreciated my work and commissioned me to do many illustrations. That brought me to Japan for a personal exhibition. It was great, I stayed in Japan for 10 days. There was another very important exhibition for my career in Milan at gallery Affiche. One of my future editors noticed me there and I’ve published several picture books since. It was the beginning of my career and it was great!

Which books from childhood do you remember? Why do you think these specific books remain?

I remember Jezeva kucica written by Branko Copic and drawn by Vilko Selan Gliha. It’s a story in rhymes about a forest dam, a hedgehog and his relationship with the other animals and love for his lair/home. This book was edited for Nasa Djeca, during the Yugoslavia period in 1983. The illustrations are very expressive and full of atmosphere and they dialogue very well with the story. I have grown up with the picture books illustrated by Marlenka Stupica, and I look at those books with a lot of feeling.

Do you have a favourite illustrator/artist?

There are a lot of illustrators and artists that I admire, like Edward Gorey and Ben Shahn.

When I look at your pictures I recall images of artists Edward Hopper and Balthus, not so much because of their themes but for their dreamlike quality and sense of solitude - do you recognize these traits in your art?

Maybe it’s only me :) It’s very hard to see my work from a distance and recognize different artistic recalls inside of them because they are completely unintentional. I think of Edward Hopper and Balthus like divinitys, and admire absolutely all their work.

The best and the worst when it comes to being an artist/illustrator?

The best side of being an illustrator is work with imagination and creation of new words. The worst, for me, is self-discipline.

Dream assignment – what would it look like?

I Would like to create many picture books, as author and illustrator.

Can you tell us about your Picture books?

When we look inside a picture book we drop inside a relationship between the story and illustrations. In my Picture books I like to play with different points of view, using a story just like a frame where I can discover hidden words inside an existing story.

Can you tell us about croatian children l iterature/picture books (characteristics?)

I think Croatia is improving very much in recent years with Picture books editions.

Ur: Per fare il ritratto di un pesce, Pascale Petit & Maja Celija. Orecchio acerbo 2015

What message do you have to the child reader?

I hope that they can discover something new through my illustrations, and to help them with their imagination.

What are you currently working on?

I’m working on my new Picture book for an corean editor and doing some new projects with a children’s literature writer.