A GORTAHORK artist is getting ready to release an illustrated book which she is dedicating to her father who sadly passed away from Covid-19.

Maria Gasol is originally from Barcelona but has been living in Ireland for 16 years with her husband and two children.

‘The Zoo of Love’ is an illustrated book for adults which explores love and relationships using animals as metaphors. Maria has always been fascinated by wildlife and was influenced by a book of poems about animals that her dad read to her as a child.

“My dad, who was an extraordinary man, was always really supportive and encouraging of my artwork, and had followed this project from the start, very often giving me detailed feedback. He would have loved to see it completed,” Maria told the Donegal News.

“He passed away in April from Covid-19. He was 74 and had been very healthy. We were absolutely devastated and heartbroken. We still are and to be honest, I thought there was no point in anything, this project suddenly meant nothing. But then I turned my thinking around and decided he’d be so happy if I finished it and that gave a sense of purpose and motivation so I’m doing it and dedicating it to him.”

The book follows  an ABC format where each letter is an animal and each animal represents an idea about love, aspects of relationships or types of partners.

“It’s colourful but bittersweet in tone because relationships are not flat or always rosy. The idea came to me years ago and I had made notes and sketches over the years. I like comparing things. I find wildlife fascinating and my imagination is always at work. In hindsight, I think there was a wee book of brief fun poems about animals my dad read to us as kids that influenced me.”

Although she misses Barcelona Maria now calls Donegal home and is content having settled here with her family.  Following her degree in Film and Media Maria she worked for many years in documentary development and production, film festival organisation and script reading.

 “With small children and living in Donegal, which is beautiful but remote, I had to reinvent myself. I had always painted and had taken two years of Fine Arts so I now do a combination of different things. I work on translations for Spanish companies and I have also started trying to take my artwork to a new level in the last few years, getting more serious about it. I paint on commission, especially portraits which I love, and try to sell some of my work. I have also received two art bursaries in the last couple of years.”

About a year and a half ago Maria decided to focus on The Zoo of Love and has done all the drawing and writing herself with help from a graphic designer.

She hopes to have the book published before Christmas and has just launched a crowd-funding campaign through the platform Verkami.

“I decided early on to go down the crowd-funding route because it’s hard to get a book published. This one is a concept book, it’s quite peculiar and I wanted to have creative freedom,” she explained.

“There’s a lot of work involved in self-publishing and starting a crowd-funding campaign but I do it with pleasure as it’s a passion project. The way it works is from the moment the campaign goes live you have 40 days to reach your target money. Otherwise you lose everything. You offer your patrons different types or levels of rewards depending on how much they contribute. In my case the total I need to achieve is €4,000 as there are a lot of costs involved.”

Maria is also working on a collection of works around the theme of motherhood for an exhibition next summer supported by Ealáin na Gaeltachta.

If you would like to contribute to Maria’s crowdfunding campaign you can follow the following link: https://www.verkami.com/projects/27399-the-zoo-of-love-a-quirky-illustrated-book-about-relationships. She has raised over €3,000 so far for the project.