This wittily created Eggbert Casanova in the image is by Vanesaa Dualib, a Brazilian Artist who loves to play with the food. She creates awfully beautiful cartoonish characters and makes people smile with her great artwork. She has also combined a book of lovable characters like radish mice, baby carrot figures, fruit fish, and a mischievous fellow named Eggbert.

She is also a photographer and a food fetishist. She combines her three greatest love which keeps her going and creating such endearing characters. Lets learn more about this unique art from the artist herself:

To begin with, tell us a bit about yourself. 

My name is Vanessa Dualib and I am a photographer based in São Paulo, Brazil. I am a comercial photographer that spends too much time playing with her food. And the disturbing part is that I indeed have way too much fun doing that. :)

What keeps you moving on? Who/what inspires or motivates the artist within you?

I can get inspired by anything, actually. Just because I guess everything can be inspiring in their own way if you look at it close enough; if you pay attention to it. I was never really an artist, but I was always truly into art in all its forms and representations. I can get inspired by nature; by my family and friends; or just by all the amazingly talented artists of the past and the present. And I'm deeply motivated by the challenge of making my ideas come true. By constantly trying to challenge my own perception of things. And most important of all, having fun while doing that.

Enlighten our readers with your wonderful artwork.

I have a series of pictures named Playing with my Food as well as The Eggventures of Eggbert, where I use fruits and veggies to recreate all these animals or characters, while also adding a few stories to go with the images and introduce the viewer to this little world I see these creature in after I create them. It's all fun, inocent and (hopefully) cute. Its my own little tribute to the 3 things I love the most in my life as well as a tribute to everyone out there, that happens to enjoy those 3 things too or is just in need of a good laugh.

You have three favourite things or rather we call them 'your 3 Loves'. What are they and how it all started?

Oh yes, my "trifecta of happiness" is humor, photography and food! And my work is simply the combination of these 3 things in a somewhat unusual way. All I want is to surprise people. Make them laugh perhaps. We don't laugh enough in this life. Some of us don't have too may reasons to do that, I know. So that's what I am here for. To get people to smile a bit more hopefully. And it all started very naturally actually, with me just basically trying to put those 3 things together in my own way, with a little bit of my own personality.  

Many people on the internet have talked about your book "Playing With Food: A mixture of Photography, Food, and Humor" and its been widely appreciated and loved. Our readers would love to learn more about it.

That book was actually the one I self-published with Blurb in the end of 2009. A lot of people that used to follow my work on Flickr suggested me to make the book because they would be interested in having a copy, so I did. It actually sold very well and eventually got a bit of attention form the media. Enough to get a amazing publishing house here in Brazil interested in commercially publishing the book in portuguese. Which we did in the end of 2010. But the Blurb version is still there, selling a few copies here and there. I'm very fond if it, since it was where it all started. :)

Would you like to share any incident that changed your life as an artist? What was the turning point in your path of success to become a renowned artist?

I'm really not so sure I am a renowned. Apart from probably being renownedly known as a very silly person, that is. ;) But seriously, what I can honeslty tell you is that becoming an artist was a surprise to me. Since I actually never had a solid  artistic background. It just sort of happened. I started producing and having more ideas, and suddenly it seemed that the people around me started enjoying what I was doing almost as much as I did while making them.

You made an eye-popping fruit 'n' veggie Where the Wild Things Are tableau that was featured on We Love You So. Tell us something about it. 

Yep! They first contacted me to write a small article on my Playing with my Food series. About a week after that, I had a bit of free time on a weekend and decided to create a small tribute to one of the coolest children book ever, that was Where the Wild Things Are. So I just made that piece and send it back to them. It was fun. I had fun. they had fun. And in the end, I had enough fruit leftover to create a fruit salad for dinner!

Everyone has their specials. Which creation of yours is closest to your heart and why?

I actually have a few of them as my favorite. Each one for them own special reason. 'The Little Carrot' and 'Don Carrotte de La Mancha' because I am a HUGE fan of those books as well as for how challeging they where. Peacasso is another one. Just because sometimes the final result end up being so much better than what I had in mind. 'Potatosaurus Dulcis' is another too, just for it's simplicity, on that one, there wasn't much I had to do really, nature made the art all by itself and I just had to photograph. Also, I am dearly fond of almost all my Eggbert pics. I crack myself up creating, photographing and post-processing those images every time!

Where can we see your artwork? How and where do you promote your work?

My work can be found in a few places now. There is my own version of the book, that I published through Blurb. There are prints and greeting cards available at Imagekind and RedBubble. And finally, there is also my brazilian version of the book, that has just been recently published here in Brazil with the title of  'Brincando com a Comida'. ('Playing with Food'). I am also constantly updating my Flickrstream with new creations. It all started there and I don't plan on leaving anytime soon, it's a great way to keep in touch with all the people that enjoy what I do.

What's in the bag regarding your future projects?

I don't know really. I sort of go with the flow. The creative process behind my Playing with my Food and Eggbert series is very organic and fluid. It sort of happens because it is very healthy for me to express myself like that. I love what I do, and from where all that came from, there are still a lot more ideas. Officially publishing the english version of my book would be cool, since as weird as this actually seems, even though I am brazilian and portuguese is my native language, I first wrote the entire book in English (since I was publisihng it on my Flickrstream).

After hiding from fans and pans...

Many inspiring artist would draw inspiration from you. Any piece of advice for them or anything you would like to share with our readers?

When creating something, don't do it just because you can, but do it because you must. Rilke once wrote that "A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity." Simply because "Being an artist means not numbering or counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, standing confidently in storms, not afraid that summer may not come." Rilke said it all, folks! And I have been inspired by him ever since. ;)

Thank you Vanessa for an insightful and wonderful interview. We love your work and can't wait to see more of it. Wish you all the success in the future....keep the creative juices running. :)


Vanessa's Website.
Flickrstream


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