Paula Castro is an illustrator from Buenos Aires, Argentina, who currently lives between Buenos Aires and Paris. After studying Graphic Design at the University of Buenos Aires, she began her career in Italy as an illustrator in the fashion industry. Later, she moved to Paris, expanding her work to the editorial and music scenes. Her detailed, lively illustrations have been featured in exhibitions internationally. We spoke with Castro about her world of illustration, inspiration, and visual identity.‍

You have had the opportunity to live, study, and work around the world. How do you feel your international experience has impacted your visual language?

‍Before moving abroad I was working as an editorial designer for a fashion magazine in Buenos Aires, which was literally a copy from all the fashion magazines around the world, but mostly I-D and Dazed and Confused. There was no internet at that time (late 90’s) so my boss from that time would travel and bring back with him the latest issues of those magazines and tell us LITERALLY: “copy this page” “copy that page” and I hated to do that. So in a way I think that one of the motivations that drove me to live and work abroad was the curiosity of getting to the source of where all the “originals” came from. Over the years I realized that the biggest source of inspiration is stronger the closer you look around.

‍How do you think about balancing your own practice and vision with a client's ethos and visual identity?

‍I think that to be able to balance my own practice and vision I had the urge to start doing art. And later, in some way that I cannot explain, the world of illustration and the world of art ended up feeding each other.

‍Outside of the studio, where have you been finding inspiration lately?

‍On the streets of Buenos Aires, in the supermarket and hardware stores, in book covers, on thrift stores dresses, fabrics, paintings, and Argentinian art history.

Illustrated by Paula Castro