Brazilian artist Thais Beltrame was born in 1976. When she was little, she despised coloured pencils and used to compulsively scribble on her mother’s books with a ball pen, creating endless narratives with simple lines. Today the results of such acts are universal existential issues represented in black and white, which recreate the memories of our childhood in all its darkness, sadness, discovery and glow.

Thais makes subtle and meticulous use of brush and ink, creating a visual atmosphere both peculiar and melancholic. A Fine Arts graduate from Columbia College, Chicago, she lives and works in São Paulo. She has illustrated for several magazines and books, and her artwork has been exhibited in England, Brazil and the United States, as well as featured in Juxtapoz Arts & Culture magazine and a series of Brazilian magazines. Thais still creates lines compulsively, although no longer on her mother’s books.

www.thaisbeltrame.com

All illustrations in volume 1 of The Journal of Modern Wisdom are by Thais Beltrame, except those on pages 12–14 (by Jon Haste) and page 77.

If you think your artwork would suit our journal, we’d be delighted to hear from you.