Isabelle Feliu: Between Travel and Imagination

Isabelle Feliu is originally from Quebec City, Canada. She loved drawing as a child, and her mother, who worked as a seamstress, encouraged her to design clothes that she would then make. Those early collaborations sparked Isabelle’s interest in fashion.

From fashion to illustration

Isabelle studied fashion design and merchandising in Montreal before beginning her career as a fashion designer’s assistant. Although she had always enjoyed drawing, illustration did not yet seem like a realistic career.

Moving to Oslo became a turning point. With more time to devote to drawing, Isabelle became increasingly absorbed in her art, and illustration commissions gradually followed. She began to recognise that making art could become a profession and a way of working that suited her.

Places remembered and imagined

Isabelle travelled frequently as a child, including visits to Honduras, where her mother is from. Discovering the country at an early age had a lasting influence on the tropical settings in her work.

Her pictures also draw on places she hopes to visit, things she would like to do and clothes she imagines wearing. A woman and a cheetah recline beneath a lemon tree or travel side by side through tropical greenery. Travel and imagination come together within the same scene.

Other paintings begin with memories of real journeys, including an afternoon by the sea in Sicily and the clear waters of the Maldives. Drawing also gives Isabelle a way to preserve a fleeting thought or moment that might otherwise disappear.

Light and colour in colder places

Having spent much of her life in cold climates, Isabelle often finds herself dreaming of somewhere warm. Yet winter has also provided inspiration: a rare cloud shimmering with pearly colours, or the sight of a quiet, snowy night.

Light matters to her working day, too. During Oslo’s short winter days, sunshine can make her want to stay indoors and paint. Longing for Montreal while living away has also prompted a desire to depict the city.

Developing a scene through drawing

Sometimes Isabelle begins with a clear image in mind. More often, she searches for reference photographs, explores colour combinations and makes numerous sketches. Revisiting details and compositions has been an important part of bringing those imagined scenes into finished work.

Today, she works with gouache, markers, coloured pencils and collage. Alongside her paintings in colour, she also creates line drawings of figures and birds, sometimes accompanied by French words.

Artists such as Matisse and Magritte have influenced her. For Isabelle, drawing and painting offer a way to express what is harder to put into words—to work through thoughts and feelings and give a visible form to what she imagines.

Personal work and commissioned illustration

Early in her illustration career, Isabelle began working with fashion brands. She depicted women with varied proportions enjoying their clothes in different situations, exploring the relaxed, enjoyable side of fashion.

Today, she develops her own work alongside commissions for brands whose visual worlds resonate with hers. She creates illustrations for stationery, magazines and packaging, and her artwork has also appeared on T-shirts for ZARA. Alongside new commissions, she licenses existing illustrations for publishing projects and stationery for private events.

Cover photo: Eva Maude TC