Freya Dolby
MA Illustration
I am Freya Dolby, an Illustrator and Surface Pattern Designer fascinated with the nonsensical, with intruiging and weird and wonderful things. My design practice is generally inspired by the human experience, exploring our relationships with objects, our curated environments, the mundane and how our perceptions are shaped. I love using objects as springboards for in depth investigation, finding links within my research and creating whimsical concepts that imply the existence of tantalising other worlds. Through characterisation, exploring concepts such as pareidolia and the art of puppetry I like to play with the everyday to warp perceptions of our complex world. During the Synthesis unit I organically married my interests within Illustration and Textile Design by exploring objects as 'things', stripping them of their intended purposes and admiring them through the eyes of a child to create creatures, then placing these beings back into society through the practice of Surface Pattern Design. I like to create strikingly bright and bold illustrations, hand drawn and developed digitally, aswell as lino printing and recently 3 dimensional sculpting using clay and tapping into animation and 3D software Blender. This has aided in the evolution of my practice through my MA, from an interest in playful aesthetic design to a broader practice that explores deeper concepts, with fun at it's core. I am inspired by Surrealism, collections, the work of artists and designers such as Jon Burgerman, Lucy Casson, and Barnaby Barford, as well as the rule breaking joys of Kitsch design.
