Cats juggle and bees shelter inside Zsófia Győrfi’s eclectic and dizzying world of illustration

Illustrator Zsófia Győrfi, AKA petit crickets, works adeptly across both pattern and character design – a rare feat. You’re likely to be charmed by her whimsical characters and the worlds she creates for them, sometimes amplified by repetition to make them dense and explorative, but also taken aback by her sharp understanding of the visual myth. After looking at her artwork, Du Chat Noir, I found myself saying ‘yeah if any animal were to juggle at artiste level, it would be a cat’; and the sheltering bee in Nothing Can Bug Them has a face that I could only imagine being suited for a bee – let’s face it, they have a lot to be angered by.

Born and raised in Budapest, Zsófia initially studied graphic design in her home city. During her final project, she created a children’s book and soon realised that she wanted to turn her focus to illustration, because it opened up a world for her in visual storytelling. Today, the artist primarily creates digital illustrations using her Wacom tablet, but there is still a feeling of traditional methods being used, which is largely owed to her use of paint and paper cutouts. “My passion lies in book projects,” the illustrator shares, “particularly in picture books where I can create a visual narrative.” She is deeply inspired by her childhood while creating –“it’s why I chose the name petit crickets, it was a nickname my sisters used to call me”, she adds – and thinks of her projects as a visual playground to explore through her imaginative and playful aesthetic.

Capturing the interactions between often anthropomorphic creatures in imaginary places and scenes, Zsófia champions creating “silly characters with their own personalities and unexpected expectations” while “highlighting the importance of small details, weirdness, absurd fun and a little bit of geometric abstraction”. Staying inspired by artists like Matisse, Henry Rousseau, Cézanne, Róbert Berény and László Réber, the references of folk art, abstraction, naive art, alongside a general reverence for art history, all show through in the illustrators unconventional visual symphony.