Peonica’s Story #findyourinnerwarrior
Have you ever had the realisation that everyone has a life as complex and as vivid as your own? Have you ever stopped to seek out these stories? UK based illustrator, Peonica Fernando, loves engaging with people about their everyday experiences, sharing stories, learning from others and exploring the many “different little curiosities that take her by surprise”.
She is known for her beautiful style of drawing but if you’ve really taken the time to look at the details in her pieces you’ll see there’s always a powerful and meaningful message behind the gorgeous exterior.
From a young age, Peonica always gravitated towards art (no surprise that Wednesday’s were her favourite day of the week in secondary school because of the long 2 hour Art lesson in the afternoon!), so it felt very natural for her to then go on to study Art at university. However, she was unsure on what field she wanted to go into, so she decided to study the Art Foundation at UAL where she tried a lot of different pathways and settled on illustration as she found this the most freeing. Illustration allowed her to use any medium as it was more about the intent and communication of ideas, rather than the material choice itself.
At the start of university, Peonica experimented a lot with traditional hand drawing, print work, painting and animation and more. However, all these techniques required the use of a studio and when COVID hit Peonica only had a small space in a flat that she was sharing with friends (we all know the struggle) so she had to figure out another way to develop her style and her projects. This is when she started exploring digital drawing. Digital drawing allowed for more freedom in creating, as firstly it didn’t require a lot of physical space and allowed her the ability to overlay different elements and move elements around without being scared of making mistakes. Through adapting to digital drawing she found her signature style and her work is very unique to her as an illustrator.
When Peonica was younger she struggled with accepting or understanding her deep levels of empathy because it often caused her sadness to “feel so much all the time” which had a massive effects on her as sometimes she felt helpless that she couldn’t fix situations. As she’s grown older, she has taken that emotion and put it into making impactful art that can help others see what she’s feeling too.
Peonica isn’t worried about people liking her work or not, she wants to create work that means something to her as it’s her outlet and her therapy. This is why she is not afraid to involve themes of cultural identity and social justice in her work, as this is what she is passionate about. This can be seen through the research she has done for each piece and the accuracy she communicates each issue with through her art.
Peonica has become widely known for the pieces she has created revolving around the genocide that is happening in Palestine. The pieces are created by her as a way of expressing her outrage and sadness. She also feels like it is hers (and all of our) duty as human beings to care about each other, amplify oppressed voices and to raise awareness. To her if we can’t do this for one another, nothing else truly matters.
She tries to make her work digestible and accessible in order to inform and educate people. She then hopes that people make the choice to act upon injustices to help create change. In her own words “there are many paths to getting people to start creating change but art transcends all language barriers, it’s so universal and it emphasises human emotion which helps raise awareness, teaching, remembering, celebrating…”.
