Name: Tori-Jay Mordey

Describe your illustration style in ten words or less.
People, connection, movement, emotions, and bursting with colour.

What items are an essential part of your creative space?
Music is the most important part for me, it’s what helps me to visualise what I want to draw in my head, to keep the creative juices flowing while also keeping me awake and motivated while working.

Do you have a favourite artistic medium?
I love acrylic painting, but I also love drawing digitally. I always try to balance it out by working on digital illustrations for clients while also putting time aside to do acrylic painting for fun.

Name three artists whose work inspires you.
James Jean, Shaun Tan, and most comic book artists

Which artistic period would you most like to visit and why?
Probably Postmodernism, just because it was such a wild change for how we produced and looked at art, I would have loved to attend an art exhibition back then.

Who or what inspired you to become an illustrator?
For the majority of my childhood I really struggled with reading, so a lot of the books I’d borrow from the library were all picture books, I couldn’t read the book but I could follow the story through the illustrations, and ever since then I’ve always wanted to become an illustrator.

Can you share a photo of your creative work space or part of the area where you work most often? Talk us through it.
This is a photo of me in my studio in Brisbane, I work right in the city not far from the Botanical Gardens, I share this studio space with street artists, fine art artists, and other creatives, every wall of our studio is painted with vibrant murals. I started painting the walls of my studio space but haven’t quite finished it yet. Behind me you’ll also see some of my acrylic paintings, some finished, some not. This studio is like a second home to me, it’s my favourite place to come to create.

What is your favourite part of the illustration process?
The sketching and the finalised line art.

What advice would you give to an aspiring illustrator?
Don’t be afraid to meet people from your creative community, get out there and attend social art events, get to know other creatives, put yourself out there, the more like-minded people you surround yourself with, the more you’ll learn and grow from them. The people and friends I have met within the creative arts industry have helped shape me into the artist/illustrator that I am today, they inspire me every single day.

Tori-Jay Mordey is an Indigenous Australian illustrator whose work traverses multiple mediums, such as digital illustration, drawing, painting, printmaking, film and murals. Her Torres Strait Islander and English heritage is often reflected in her contemporary Indigenous art practice— producing work based around her family and siblings as a way of understanding herself, her appearance and racial identity. She is based in Brisbane, Australia.

For more information, please visit Tori-Jay’s website or follow her on instagram.

May 12, 2022 at 12:44AM Katrin Dreiling