Beeldcolumn #26 Nooshin Safakhoo

Beeldcolumn #26 Nooshin Safakhoo

© Nooshin Safakhoo

In this column, various illustrators showcase their favorite work. They explain why the piece means a lot to them. This time, we introduce to you Nooshin Safakhoo.

“Seven Horses and Seven Colors” is about the value of being generous and sharing.

The horses of this book represent the dreams of a girl who cannot walk, but travels to the plains, mountains and sea with her horses.

Hadi Mohammadi, the author of the book ‘In the Meadow of Fantasies’, narrates the actions of the horses, but does not explain how they happen.

Six horses share their colors with a colorless horse

Six horses share their thoughts with the horse without thought

Six horses share their places with a horse without any place

Leaving empty spaces in each story is a challenge for an illustrator. After reading the text many times, having consultations and coming to a consensus with the art director, I realized that this could be a great opportunity and I would be able to tell my own story along with the narrator. I love this style of story where the author doesn’t narrate everything and allows me to have a role in the narrative. However, I had to be careful that my story would complete the author’s story and not surpass it.

”Seven Horses and Seven Colors” is part of the “Intercultural communication” project that started with Zohreh Ghaeni and and Marit Tornqvist to create Quality books for “Read with me“ project. In this project, a Dutch illustrator, Marit, works as an art director with the Iranian illustrators to publish quality books for Iranian children, and these books could also be published outside the borders of Iran and children of other countries could get to know the Iranian writers’ and illustrators’ mind and style.This project took almost two years, two years of research and hard work.

This book was published first in Iran, then in the Netherlands and the USA. Fortunately, it has won several awards, including the “Purple Island“ of NAMI Concours in South Korea, the Batchelder Award in the USA, the “Image of the Book” in Russia , and the Cow illustration Biennale in Ukraine.

I am happy that this book has been sent to the most remote and deprived areas of Iran and the children of those regions enjoy reading it.