"She Lives in a Grey Scale": A Cryptic Story Telling of a Woman in a Sketchbook

30 NOV 2024

“Illustration is beyond satisfying at this point, is the way I exist in this world” says Io weurich, a Spain based Argentinian artist who illustrates a series of minimal, monochromatic art pieces that she calls the self- imposed obligations.

Io weurich (left) and her artworks

Growing up in a family of artists, little weurich was fed with constant, positive reinforcements from her parents who understood the importance of creation. Now, an independent artist herself, weurich regularly posts her artworks in her Instagram page that goes with the same name.

Anyone who skims through her page could see the constants of her style. A woman drawn with a black pentel brush on a white background and sets the monochromatic base, a clear sense of direction, and a single colour that brings the story telling aspect to the illustration. When asked about the minimalistic approach, she accredits it to her routine of creating an illustration every day that makes her feel herself. “I try to draw an illustration per day so my art has to be concise, minimalistic and clear so I can achieve that” she says.

Among her audience, the most anticipated aspect of her work seems to be the choice of colour. According to weurich, she focuses on one colour each month. January is red, February is orange, and it goes on a chromatic order, occasionally choosing to add gold, silver or an entirely different colour so to have 12 of them to fill in the months. The concept of colour series is what she says helps her reinvent her art style each time. “I focus on one colour each month because if not I would end up drawing all the time the same thing with the same colours. This challenge makes me explore other techniques” she explains.

Talking about her pre- creation steps, she pointed out how she herself was her muse and that sitting in front of a mirror with a camera and trying out a corporal pose that she would like to recreate was the usual start of her creation process. “I communicate with myself on a cryptic way, I guess” she says.

A woman being the major, and the only subject in all her works reflects her perspectives on her creations and beliefs. But, more than often, she says, just existing as a woman, and creating one in an illustration itself gets harder.

“As a feminist, I miss women on all ambits. I want to see women everywhere and I try to contribute to that in my way. I draw a woman because I am a woman. I feel bad its always a skinny white woman but that’s what I am, as an illustration is a mirror for me. I would feel like a fraud if I drew non normative bodies or PoC being myself a white normative girl, as if I were stealing a fight. So all I can do is simply exist as a woman and share women on my illustrations, almost always with corporal hair - not a big deal but I have received faces or comments on that, asking why there is hair there or why is always a woman, so simply existing as a woman is a big deal, unfortunately”

To weurich, illustrations are just the way she communicates with herself. Although each of her artwork is usually accompanied by a one-word caption in Spanish, a probable term she thinks concisely delivers the point of her intention, she leaves her works open to interpretation. Stating that the essence of the art was to be perceived different by different people on the basis of their own backgrounds, and that wanting to control that is useless and makes the art lose a bit of grace.

Her art style of minimalism and minimal usage of colours take quite a surprising turn to burst the viewer’s assumption bubble on the materials used to bring the art to life as weurich goes onto list out her essential art supplies. “I use pentel brush (black ink), water colours, parker ink (for calligraphy), but I use it as water colours, gouache, coloured inks, coloured pencils. I have used markers as well but I prefer water colours. I also use 300gr paper for mixed media/water colour and a lot of erasers” she says.

Art is a medium she says. Art can define beauty, art can define world, art can define how a person lives. Art is the epitome of divine feelings. Art is a mind- meld, a vibrant clash of emotions and ideas on a canvas bigger than any screen. Cave paintings that dropped truth bombs about our ancestors are still sparking conversations today, while neon installations scream a message about the future. Art transcends time, a whisper from the past and a shout towards what is to come. As E.M Foster said, “Art for art’s sake is to have experience for experience’s sake, the realization of a complete state of a being.” It is not just about aesthetics; it is about capturing the essence of being a human being.

Weurich said that art transformed her in every aspect of life. Talking about her collaboration with the drift wood press issue 9.2, weurich expressed how her habit of making an art work every day came in hand with the timely finishing of the demands when it comes to commercial purposes. “Oh, it was amazing when they reached me on Instagram and I never do commissions but for some reason I said yes. I regret nothing, I learned a lot of things from the experience and I got a lot of feedback. I learned that making an illustration a da made me be really fast with sketches so I could come up with 3,4,5 different sketches based on a text and they could work with me. Some texts were more difficult to illustrate but they knew how to guide me when I needed it. It was definitely a good idea to say yes to that proposal”

Conclusively, when asked about what the women in her artworks would say if spoken to, she said “oh, probably something like ‘here we go again’