Big Tiny Worlds
Tuesday 5th November — Saturday 1st February
Gill Smith is a Liverpool based illustrator, working mostly in children’s books. This exhibition brings together work created for published picture books, children’s fiction and personal projects over the last 5 years. For as long as she can remember, she has loved to draw people, capturing their expressions and mannerisms. Illustrating stories allows her into a character’s mind, to see the world through their eyes. She is inspired by everyday life, finding the extraordinary in the ordinary.
She graduated with an MA in Children’s Book Illustration from Cambridge school of Art in 2019. Previously Gill worked as a primary teacher, community artist and as a designer and maker. Her work has been short listed for The Klaus Flugge Prize for Illustration 2023 and longlisted for The Yoto Carnegie Prize for picture books.
‘With illustrations that find sweetness in sadness, this touching picture book is the resonant story of refugee siblings who have lost everything but each other’. – The Sunday Times
‘Gill Smith’s illustrations for Saving the Butterfly (Walker) by Helen Cooper also lean towards muted grey shades as we see a boy and his older sister, two refugees, rescued from a boat. The boy settles, makes friends, but the girl is haunted by the past and can’t move on until the day her brother brings her a butterfly. As the insect and the girl begin to flourish, the illustrations become as rich and colourful as the butterfly’s wings. A tender tale focusing on the aftermath of conflict, it’s a great companion to Nicola Davies’s The Day War Came (2019).’ – Observer
‘A triumph of storytelling in words and art.’ ‘Children’s Books About Immigration’. – The New York Times
