Connect with your inner child through Cécile Cuny’s wondrous illustrations

Finding comfort in the “useless” and mundane, French illustrator Cécile Cuny creates character-led compositions under the moniker Girlandparks. With her pencils, the Brussels-based illustrator gently guides you into an abstract world “where girls with big eyes, nostalgic friends and animated objects come to life to tell different stories”.

Across her work, Cécile blends objects of childhood wonder – like dinosaurs, ice-cream, boats and butterflies – into a unique and honest expression of childlike innocence. “I like to give life to small, insignificant things and make them endearing,” she says. Taking inspiration from retro cartoons, gaming aesthetics and folklore, Cécile’s work feels fantastical and un-inhibited by rules. She found that by “drawing spontaneously”, her practice evolved naturally, allowing her to follow her own interests. “I aspire to develop a world full of whimsical characters – at first sight childlike – but carrying messages that are also very complex.”

Rendered in crayon and a “pop colour palette,” her characters conceal allusions to themes of love, family and adventure. “I find this intention in the productions of Pendleton Ward or in the old aesthetic of the Silly Symphonies,” she says, “and the magical and poetic world of Ikegami Yoriyuki is also a truly inspiration to me.” In remaining true to her study of adolescence, Cécile plans to release her first children’s book – compiling her wealth of experience into one material work.