María Jesús Contreras

María Jesús Contreras grew up in the south of Chile and still paints as if the supermarket posters of the 1990s never went out of print: loud, saturated, a little imperfect on purpose. Her father talked her out of an engineering degree and toward the pictures she already wanted to make. Teachers and classmates kept the dare alive. The pages that followed include the New York Times, The Atlantic, and New York Magazine. Not The New Yorker. The magazines that actually ran the work.

Memories, fears, and humor sit in the same drawer. She will name those three as the reasons a picture gets made, and you can see them sharing a color before you can name the client. A loud animal is often the joke and the warning at once. A minor in arts and a degree in design sit under the commissions. Animals do most of the talking. She prefers creatures to human-centered plots, and risograph printing to a surface that looks too clean. The analog grain is not a costume. It is how a Chilean supermarket poster still looks in the head years later, ink a little off-register, color a little too proud.

Elektra Records and WeTransfer are on the list. An animated video with Warner Music is a favorite collaboration she still will not spoil. The file stays under wraps on purpose. She will call it a favorite and then refuse the plot. Illo Agency represents her as she looks toward children’s books and publishing, a wider desk than the magazine page. She is as willing to move as to stay still. The animation job is not a side quest. It is the same animals learning how to walk across a frame.

Influences refuse a short list. Yorgos Lanthimos and Franz Kafka are two she will name, a film director and a writer who both know how a room can go strange without raising its voice. She will not pretend those two cover the wall. The rest stay unnamed because a short list would lie. The project she keeps closest is a sportswear collaboration meant to represent Chile at the Copa América, sneakers and kit still being talked through rather than already hanging in a shop. Treat it as a discussed personal job dressed as a brand job, not a shipped credit.

Downtime is podcasts and audiobooks, including Illustration Hour by Julia du Fossé and crime mysteries, company for long days when the desk does not look up. The mysteries keep the room occupied while the animals get their color. The south of Chile is still in that color. A 1990s supermarket poster is still in the grain. Engineering would have been the sensible degree; her father refused that sense. Teachers and classmates agreed. Elektra and WeTransfer are quieter credits. Warner Music is the animation she will not describe. Illo is the agency as she turns toward children’s books.

A Copa América kit for Chile is the personal project she keeps naming, still discussed, still not a shop window. Lanthimos and Kafka stay on the influence wall because she will name them and then refuse to stop at two. Illustration Hour and the crime mysteries keep the long days company. If you only know the magazine covers, look at the animal that is not explaining itself. That is usually where her humor and her fear share a color. Start with the risograph grain. Then notice the creature is doing the talking so a person does not have to. The father who refused engineering is still the first editor on that choice.