Luci tells me that she always appears out of focus in the photos. I smile, trusting my tripod and my camera settings. But back in the studio I discover that in many photos her face does indeed appear slightly out of focus. Luckily there are a few good ones, but I'm still intrigued by that strange power Luci has.
During the photo session she keeps a sweet and calm look, only interrupted by her hands playing endlessly with her glasses. Her drawings reflect this fragile tranquillity; they are clean, concise and funny, with a touch of an almost unsettling naivety.
Luci Gutiérrez studied illustration at the Escola Massana in Barcelona and has worked in advertising, press and books. In 2007 she lived for a while in New York in the hope of learning English well. She did not do so, but she was comforted by drawing people, places and moments of that great city, which later gave life to the book English Is Not Easy, a manual to learn English with joy. She regularly publishes in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and she is a leading illustrator of The New Yorker. She has illustrated campaigns for companies such as Apple or the Barcelona City Council. In 2019, she published her second book, Manual de autodefensa, to make it clear that life, like English, is not an easy matter.
She has received several awards, such as the Communication Arts Award, the Society of Illustrators of New York and the Gràffica prize. But her greatest prize is to sleep many hours a day.