Illustrator Adriana Picker on Nurturing a Creative Life, Daily Joy and Trusting Yourself to Figure It Out

Adriana Picker is one of Australia's most beloved illustrators and the best-selling author of several books - including Petal, a stunning coffee table book of botanical illustration that thousands of copies around the world.With an upbringing in NSW’s Blue Mountains and the Hunter Valley, Adriana has been surrounded by nature and botanicals since her early childhood and she talks beautifully about her formative years shaped in her grandmother’s garden.After moving to Sydney to study at the Collegue of Fine Arts, she became an intern for acclaimed costumer designer Catherine Martin - her illustrations for the film Australia were shown at the Oscars. She followed that with The Great Gatsby, then stepped out entirely on her own. Her folio today spans commercial and editorial illustration, murals, exhibition work, and several books — including Petal, which hasn’t left my coffee table since it came out.She came to our conversation 31 weeks pregnant and I was incredibly grateful to speak to her at this transformative time. In this conversation, we explore what Covid completely changed about her relationship to ambition, how she lives with hyperfocus and what she's learned to do with it, what it means to structure a whole life around appreciating beauty, and what happens to your creative identity when you're about to become a mother.Find Adriana's work at adrianapicker.com | Follow: @adrianapicker | Petal at all good bookstores Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.