“I love an obnoxiously bright colour palette! I use very limited colour palettes and tend to pick between two to five set complementary colours. It’s funny because in real life I’m known for wearing all black, I feel like all my love for colour is expressed through my illustrations,” she jokes. “I can’t really describe it, I just find it really satisfying – it simplifies stuff, less is more.”
Fiona’s style is immediately recognisable, whether it’s a gig poster catching your eye in a dark venue, the beermat under your pint in the Woodworkers or the COVID safety signage in the Naughton Gallery at Queen’s. She describes it as something of a mishmash: “When I was a teenager, I was really into animation and comic books. I was inspired by the graphic elements of those things. My work is very line-based, we’ve got black outline, texture, detail, very block colours, not a lot of shadow or tone. In terms of content, my work is about whatever I’m interested in in that moment – it could be a reflection of my politics, my interests, social issues I care about, my friends or even something funny or cool looking.”
Illustration, the style of art Fiona specialises in, gives her the freedom not to be pigeonholed. Illustration can be made with any medium or tool – Fiona initially would have sketched and inked by hand and coloured digitally, but nowadays her canvas is ProCreate on the iPad: “For me, it’s very practical in nature. Illustration does tend to have a purpose in the sense that it’s like visual language, so it’s meant to be an image that can very clearly communicate an idea or a concept.” For people who feel like art galleries aren’t for them, illustration can be a bridge into that world. “What I love about illustration is that it’s a little bit more accessible than something you’d find in a fine art gallery context. [It] is made to be very clearly interpreted, but at the end of the day it’s still art.”
This accessibility is vital to the political aspect of Fiona’s work. Whilst she may not have the means to take her activism to the heart of government, she believes she can still play a powerful role in raising awareness through her art. “Illustration is all about communicating something that is accessible to the most amount of people possible. If I’m making illustrations about reproductive rights, queer rights, social and class issues, things that are important to me, I’m getting the message out better.” Fiona designed Room for Rebellion’s Repeal event poster back in 2018 and donated prints to She Sells Sanctuary during the pandemic to raise money for Women’s Aid. Black’s Box’s Save Our Venues campaign was also her handiwork. “We live in such a visual world now, particularly after the pandemic, things like Instagram, Twitter, social media are our sources of information. I think visual communication has become even more important than it was already, so making illustration and work like that is shareable content for lack of a better term.”
She talks enthusiastically about the breakthrough discovery during her studies at Ulster University that led her to her trademark style. During her foundation year, a Visual Communications module on animation introduced Fiona to illustration. “I’d never heard of the term before and as soon as we had the introduction, I knew immediately I wanted to be an illustrator, this makes sense to me. The work I was making and the work I liked making was graphic, it was never quite fine art, it was grounded in some very specific imagery based off something like a piece of text or a person, a thing, a place.” This led her to an illustration-specific course in Norwich where she threw herself into her work.
Despite that teens and early-twenties feeling of wanting to get away (“my hometown sucks!” she laughs in a feigned American accent), she has since moved back to Belfast with a different perspective on the city. Hallmarks of our local culture sometimes crop up in Fiona’s work, even if they aren’t her go-to inspiration. Recent commissions depict the familiar scenes of Commercial Court, Ormeau Park and Antrim GAA through a kaleidoscopic lens. “I think I’m a good person to depict those kind of spaces because I’m born and bred in Belfast. I really loved working on them, they’re some of my favourite pieces. Who’d be better equipped to illustrate somewhere like that than someone who’s spent a lot of time there and loves the place as much as the commissioner?”
Fiona is from an artistic family, although not in the traditional sense. “My mum was always really encouraging with me and my sisters growing up to be creative and to paint and to play and we were allowed to make a mess of our kitchen table, God love her,” she reminisces. “We used to draw on the walls and then instead of getting raging, she would dedicate that wall space for us to draw on. She is a writer who writes a lot of poetry and short stories. She’s my hero in a lot of ways. My dad went to art college, he’s been drawing his whole life [and is] really talented.” Whilst working as a draftsman in interior design and architecture for pubs and hotels, Fiona’s dad had to hand draw conceptual designs before the introduction of computer software. “He used to bring home the drawings that didn’t get used and let us colour them in. He had alcoholic felt tip markers for colouring in these concepts; I really remember the smell of them.”
Fiona is still based in Belfast, where she has worked at a studio in the city centre for the past four or five years. She splits her time between freelancing and managing illustration agency UsFolk. Her studio provides more than just a dedicated workspace: “Being a freelance illustrator can be very isolating, it’s just you and a desk eight hours a day, five to six days a week. Whereas coming into the studio [you can] speak with the other illustrators and get their thoughts on whatever you’re working on, advice, have a bit of craic during the day.”
I wonder what advice she’d give to those just starting out.
“Just keep going. It takes years to get into a good flow of client work, figuring out your working method… don’t feel rushed to have it figured out straight away. Developing a style of work that’s unique to you is way more important than being trendy. Trends come and go in terms of aesthetics in illustration, but you should care more about making work that you like. At the end of the day you’re gonna have to sit with this work for potentially the next twenty or thirty years of your life. If you’re just illustrating in a style because you think other people will like it, the motivation to do that is gonna burn out really quickly and it’s not sustainable. Clients and the rest of it will follow.”
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