Telling stories

Illustrator Maria Lebedeva puts pen, pencil and paint to paper

Freelance illustrator Maria Lebedeva is as much an artist as she is a storyteller. She was born in Russia (hence the recurring images of bears, wolves, foxes and rabbits in her work) and although she came to South Africa soon afterwards, she acknowledges that the stories her grandmother told her as a little girl still swirl around in her imagination, giving rise to imaginative illustrations and sparking new story ideas that mix real life and fantasy to create a bit of magic on the page for her readers.

Lebedeva, whose exhibition Paper Tales will be showing at Wolves Café for the month of August, started out studying Information Design at the University of Pretoria. She confesses that although she was never much of a designer, her love of drawing led her to seek out the masters in illustration at Stellenbosch University that she is currently working towards finishing.

The exhibition is largely inspired by the work she is doing as part of her masters, and comprises just under 50 hand-drawn illustrations, some of which form open-ended series of narratives and others of which form part of two books that she compiled as part of her coursework last year.

Lebedeva believes that “stories are all we have” and values the power of story telling immensely. Although some of her stories might feel vaguely familiar, there’s an edge of originality to all of them that makes them unique and utterly intriguing. Mu’s Wolf Problem, for example, is a melange of stories from her mother’s childhood, Little Red Riding Hood and a Russian lullaby (about a wolf that comes to steal a baby from its cot).

Appropriately for an exhibition showing at Wolves Cafe, the book recounts the story of a little girl who gets left alone at home and receives a visit from a wolf.

“She can hear suspicious noises in the house, and although very scared, sets out to investigate,” Lebedeva elaborates. “Quite unexpectedly, she finds there is a wolf in her passageway, and she screams so loudly that she scares the wits out of him. It turns out the wolf doesn’t want to eat her, he is just lonely and wants a friend. The wolf and girl engage in a series of fun activities, until her mom comes back home, and the wolf has to say goodbye.”

Ten of the artworks on exhibit in Paper Tales are sourced from this book, and there will also be two drawings on exhibit that are part of a series of drawings from her true life story book Paper Sails, which tells the story (passed on by her grandmother) of a little girl who reconnects with her sailor father and is left disappointed when he isn’t anything like she dreamed he would be.

The remaining 34 artworks that make up the exhibition are subtle watercolours and acrylics, layered in intricate details and meaning. It’s in these works that one sees how fine lines, expressive gestures and moody colours become Lebedeva’s signatures, along with deliberately open-ended narratives that she hopes will force her viewers to walk away from her works having made up stories of their own.

Paper Tales exhibits at Wolves Cafe, 4 Corlett Drive, Illovo (www.wolves.co.za), from August 5 – September 1.

This article first appeared in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Tuesday 2 August 2011.