Tara O'Brien
Tara is an illustrator from Dublin, Ireland. Her work explores people and other creatures of all shapes, sizes, colours, sexual orientations and gender identities. Her illustrations promote body positivity and self love within everyone and everything. We love her cute little illustrations.
How long have you been illustrating for?
I've always had an active interest in drawing and art in general, then I went to University for Visual communications which focused my attention on Illustration and I have been working freelance for the past four years or so.
Portraying a range of women and body types appears to be an important part of your work, would you agree with this?
I would say I make a conscious effort to ensure my work features representation for all types of people to create as inclusive a landscape as I can. I want my work to be accessible to people of all shapes, sizes, races and gender identities. There is a difficult balance to strike between maintaining a personal style and striving for a fully intersectional range of bodies. It is a dilemma that many illustrators face and something I feel isn’t addressed enough in the commercial illustration world. A lot of illustrators have distinctive personal styles that they work in, and these styles can very often be inherently graphic, which commonly leads to reduced colour palettes and simplified characteristics. This in combination with the fact that most paper is white, leads to quite a Eurocentric standard being set for how humans are portrayed. Being all inclusive is definitely a challenge but as long as I keep myself in check, I think the inclusivity of my style can be refined over time.
What is it about drawing a range of women you enjoy?
I think initially I was drawn to the concept of drawing fat bodies because I have always been fat myself and felt extremely underrepresented. Realising I had the power to change that in a small way was inspiring to say the least. I was very focused on shifting the perception of what fat woman could be and attempting to inject a strong sense of femininity into these depictions of big girls. Moving forward, that focused shifted into trying to explore the uniqueness and subtle beauty that all bodies have and in turn challenge our ideas of what femininity is and how we all relate to it. I think more so than just representing a wide range of people, what I really enjoy is connecting bodies to phycological states and emotions. I want my work to feature heavily empowered people as well as the vulnerable, and to play with the idea those states of being are not mutually exclusive. What is exciting to me isn’t just the body, though I love bodies, its becoming more and more about the story behind the figure.
Are there any other illustrators that you really admire?
One of my all time favourite illustrators is Harry Clarke, an Irish stained-glass artist and book illustrator from the early 1900s. But in terms of more contemporary illustrators I am endlessly fascinated by the work of John Klassen, Oliver Jeffers and Sarah Mazzetti to name but a few.
Where would you like to see your work feature in the future?
I have some secret projects that I’m working on at the moment that I’m hoping could lead to some gallery showings in Ireland, the UK and the US.