Theresa Maria Jessing

I was born in 1981 and have attended the Design School in Kolding for three years, where I focused on fashion and textile. After the three years, I left school and got a mentor in illustrator Dorte Karrebæk, a very talented, contemporary, Danish illustrator. Under Dorte’s mentorship, I chose the autodidact path to become an illustrator. Via courses at the Academy of Arts in Århus, croquis tuition, by studying some of the, for me, most able illustrators’ lines and colouring and thousands of hours spent drawing, I have worked my way to where I am today with my illustrations.

In 2007, I moved from the city to the countryside - to a small cotter’s farm where the centre of rotation was, and still is, crafts and self-sufficiency. The same year I started my company Sort Lakrids, and from this company, I have worked with illustration assignments for companies and private customers, and primarily made books. In 2008 and 2010, I became a mother, first to a son and thereafter a daughter. The combination of moving, observing and working outdoors with my hands in the soil, with plants and animal husbandry and the work with illustration, is quite perfect for me. There is no doubt that my meaning in life and the people I meet, and the experiences, failures and successes this entail, is the greatest and most important inspiration for the things I find interesting to illustrate and tell about to others.

In 2015, I took part in a design fair, where two of my three-dimensional paper objects were bought by a Danish/Swedish company, Fabulous Goose, for production and in collaboration with this company, I still produce ideas in paper with a three-dimensional character.