Illustration, Nature and the Freedom to Create
For Bristol-based illustrator Jess Knights, creativity is as much about bringing people together as it is about making images. With a colourful, textured style and a particular interest in food, nature and human connection, her work combines playful visual storytelling with a desire to make complex subjects more engaging and accessible.
Working from Jamaica Street Studios in Bristol, Knights has developed a varied practice spanning commercial illustration, public art, illustrated maps and community projects. Her commissions include work for Coeliac UK, where her own experience of living with the condition helped inform illustrations designed to support children and families, and the Protected Landscapes Partnership, for which she created an extensive series of illustrations celebrating the natural environments of England and Wales.
Alongside her commissioned work, Knights is increasingly exploring the possibilities of screen printing, ceramics and more experimental forms of making. This return to working with her hands reflects a wider shift in her practice, one that places greater importance on curiosity, collaboration and the freedom to create without a predetermined outcome.
In this interview, Knights discusses the influence of Bristol’s creative community, the personal experiences behind her work, the importance of play and her ambitions to develop new forms of storytelling that bring together illustration, nature and the wonderfully strange aspects of human experience.
Food, nature and human connection seem to sit at the heart of much of your work. What is it about these subjects that keeps bringing you back to them?
I think food, nature and human connection all have this brilliant ability to bring people together. Food has become a particularly important subject for me since being diagnosed with coeliac disease in my early twenties. It changed my relationship with food and led me to become much more interested in cooking from scratch, seasonal ingredients and where our food comes from. I love using illustration to help people connect with food in a playful, accessible way.
Nature has always been important to me, too. I grew up in a city, but some of my strongest childhood memories are of being outdoors. I remember spending time at Southend-on-Sea, hunting for seaweed on the beach. It’s a memory that has really stayed with me, and I think I’ve always been a bit of a daydreamer. I love that nature gives us the space to use our imaginations, whether we’re children or adults.
More recently, projects such as my work for National Parks and VodafoneThree have allowed me to explore how illustration can help people connect with the natural world. Ultimately, I think I’m drawn to subjects that remind us that we’re part of something bigger than ourselves.
You spent much of your early freelance career working digitally, but you’ve spoken about wanting more hands-on making in your practice. Has that desire become stronger as your career has developed?
Definitely! A couple of years ago, I felt a really strong pull back towards screen printing and ceramics, both of which I loved exploring during my illustration degree at Camberwell College of Arts.
Although I love working with clients, I wanted to make more time for working with my hands and exploring ideas without having a brief or a commercial outcome in mind. That’s developed into a more fine art-led side of my practice, which I’m really proud of and excited to build upon.
Working digitally has given me so many opportunities, but there’s something really satisfying about slowing down, getting messy and allowing a piece to develop through experimentation. My personal practice also gives me the freedom to explore subjects and ideas that I might not otherwise get to investigate through client work.
I’m really excited to share more of this side of my practice over the coming year and to keep finding ways for my illustration, printmaking and ceramics to feed into one another.
Working from Jamaica Street Studios puts you in the middle of a large creative community in Bristol. How important is that day-to-day contact with other artists and illustrators to the way you work?
It’s incredibly important to me. I’m a very social person and I don’t think I’d enjoy working independently from home every day. Jamaica Street Studios puts me in contact with so many different creatives, not just within the building but across the wider Stokes Croft community.
I share a studio with fellow illustrators Dave Bain and Sarah Dowling, and the conversations we have about our work and creative practices are constantly inspiring. I’m also surrounded by people working in completely different disciplines. My fellow studio holder Yuko Edwards, for example, recently had a really exciting exhibition exploring photography, family memories and shared histories. Across the road, there are friends at Elevator Sound, The Love Inn and a brilliant music community, which is another part of Bristol’s creative scene that I love.
Being around people who are constantly experimenting, challenging themselves and trying new things reminds me not to get too comfortable in my own practice. It’s a lovely environment to be part of, and those everyday conversations and exchanges often give me ideas or a fresh perspective that I might not have found working alone.
Your illustrations have a tactile, organic quality, even when the finished work is digital. How do you build that sense of texture and imperfection into your process?
I’ve always enjoyed working with my hands, so even when I’m working digitally, I want my illustrations to keep that handmade feel. I love texture, little details and imperfections.
I create new textures constantly using different materials and techniques, from paint and ink to pastels, pencils and collage. I then bring these into my digital work, building up layers of texture rather than relying on a completely clean digital finish.
That same approach carries through into my screen printing and ceramics, where the process itself plays such a big part in the final result. I’m interested in how different materials interact with one another and how you can create something unexpected by layering them up.
I think that tactile quality is important because it gives the work playfulness and personality.
You have a strong connection with Bristol’s independent food and drink scene. Do you think the city itself has helped shape your visual identity?
Absolutely. I’ve lived in Bristol for seven or eight years now, which is quite mad to think about, and it’s definitely shaped both my work and the way I live.
There’s such a great independent food and drink scene here, with brilliant greengrocers, cafés and restaurants that really celebrate good ingredients and local producers. That fits naturally with my interest in seasonal food and the relationships we have with what we eat.
But I think Bristol’s connection to nature has been just as influential. One of the things I love about the city is that you can be surrounded by buildings and busy streets, then find yourself at the top of a hill looking out towards rolling countryside. Places like Leigh Woods offer the opportunity to escape into nature without travelling far, and I love going for runs and spending time outdoors.
The city has given me a really inspiring combination of creative community, independent businesses and access to the natural world. I think all of that has found its way into my visual identity, whether I’m illustrating food, creating maps or working on public art.
Your work for Coeliac UK was particularly personal because of your own lived experience of the condition. Did working on something so close to you change the way you approached the project?
Having lived with the condition myself, I was able to draw on my own experiences and help visualise aspects of living with coeliac disease that can sometimes be difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced them.
I think that gave me a particular perspective on the project, but it also reinforced something I believe is important across all my work: the value of involving people with lived experience. When you’re creating something about a particular community or experience, those perspectives can make the outcome so much more thoughtful, relevant and authentic.
It also taught me something about the importance of holding space for people’s experiences. Working with subjects that are personal or emotionally complex can be incredibly rewarding, but it can also be draining. I think creativity can offer a way to process those experiences, and I feel very lucky that my work allows me to contribute to that in some small way.
That project also had a very practical purpose, helping children understand both the emotional and everyday realities of living with coeliac disease. What do you think illustration can communicate particularly well when a subject is complicated or sensitive?
I think illustration has a brilliant ability to bring lightness and playfulness to subjects that might otherwise feel overwhelming or difficult to understand.
It can communicate something complicated without relying entirely on words, and it can help people feel seen and understood. When you’re creating work for children in particular, there’s an opportunity to use humour, colour and imagination to make information more accessible without diminishing the importance of the subject.
I’m currently working on a project for a children’s hospital, and I’m seeing again how valuable that approach can be. Illustration can introduce moments of joy, curiosity and excitement into environments or situations that might otherwise feel quite daunting.
I think we sometimes underestimate how important playfulness is throughout our lives, not just in childhood. We live in a world where there’s plenty to feel anxious or overwhelmed about, and being able to reconnect with that playful, imaginative side of ourselves can be incredibly valuable. I’d love my work to help create more opportunities for that, particularly in spaces where people might need it most.
Your Protected Landscapes Partnership commission involved creating dozens of illustrations and maps celebrating nature across England and Wales. What did working on such a large and detailed project teach you about your own way of working?
I’ve really enjoyed working on larger projects like this because they give me the opportunity to get completely immersed in a subject. I’m naturally curious, and I love researching, discovering new things and exploring the stories behind a place or an idea.
Maps are a particularly exciting format for me because they bring together so many things I love: illustration, storytelling, movement, exploration and our relationship with the places we inhabit. They can help people see a familiar place differently or encourage them to explore somewhere new.
Working on projects involving lots of illustrations and detailed maps has also taught me how much I enjoy the process of building something substantial over time. I like having the space to develop a visual language, explore different ideas and see how all the individual elements come together to create a bigger picture.
I think these projects have helped me recognise that I’m at my happiest when I’m combining research, imagination and visual storytelling. They’re also a reminder that illustration can do more than simply communicate information. It can inspire people to go out into the world and experience something for themselves.
You’ve increasingly brought people together through workshops and community projects as well as through illustration. What do you enjoy about being in the room with people making things, rather than always working independently as an illustrator?
I love seeing people discover the joy of making something, particularly when they arrive feeling like they’re not creative or that they can’t draw.
There’s something so lovely about watching someone’s face light up when they make a funny or completely unexpected drawing that they’re actually proud of. It’s the same feeling I get when I create something I’m excited about myself, and I love being able to share that with other people.
I also really enjoy the meditative side of drawing. Making things has brought me a lot of solace during difficult periods in my own life, and I’d love to help other people experience that sense of calm, connection and freedom through creativity.
For me, workshops aren’t about teaching people to draw perfectly or producing a room full of identical outcomes. They’re about creating a welcoming space where people can experiment, have a laugh, switch off from everyday life and surprise themselves.
Community projects offer another way to bring those values into my work, and I’m keen to keep developing opportunities that combine creativity and connection. I love my independent studio practice, but getting out into the world and making things alongside other people brings a different kind of energy to what I do.
You returned to screen printing at Spike Print Studio and described it as a way of exploring your practice through play. Has giving yourself permission to experiment without a commercial outcome changed anything in your work?
Definitely. I’ve been exploring printmaking again at Spike Print Studio and Print Paradiso in Bedminster, and I’m so lucky to have these brilliant spaces in Bristol.
Play has become a really important word for me over the last couple of years, not just in my creative practice but in life more generally. Giving myself permission to experiment, make mistakes and try things without needing them to lead to a finished product has been incredibly freeing.
I think there’s sometimes a tendency, particularly when you’re freelance, to feel that everything you do needs to have a purpose or be commercially viable. But I’ve found that the work I make without those expectations often pushes me the furthest. It gives me permission to follow an idea simply because I’m curious about it, and that experimentation inevitably feeds back into my commissioned work.
I’m also really inspired by the artists I share my studio with, who are constantly pushing themselves and exploring new directions. Being around that kind of energy has reminded me that you can’t just rest on your laurels. I want my practice to keep evolving, and play is a really important part of making sure that happens.
You took the leap into full-time freelance work after years in employment. Looking back, has the reality of running your own creative practice been very different from the version you imagined beforehand?
I think I probably imagined that freelancing would be a little easier in some ways! The reality is that running your own business involves a huge amount of juggling, and you can sometimes be your own worst nightmare boss. There’s always something else to think about, whether it’s finding the next project, finances, promoting your work or keeping on top of all the things that happen behind the scenes.
There can also be a loneliness to freelance life, which is one of the reasons having a studio community is so important to me. You’re responsible for making the decisions, keeping things moving and pushing yourself forward, and it can be difficult to switch off when you’re passionate about what you’re building.
But the freedom is incredibly valuable, too. Being able to choose where I work, how I spend my time and which projects I take on has given me the opportunity to build a creative life that feels much more aligned with my values. I don’t think I could go back to working in the same way now.
Looking ahead, I’d really love to grow my business to a point where I can offer employment opportunities to other creatives. I’ve had a taste of working with a wider team on projects such as my Kingswood mural earlier this year, and I absolutely loved it. I enjoy bringing people together, recognising their individual strengths and creating an environment where everyone feels empowered to do their best work.
I’d love to explore that side of my role further, growing the business in a way that allows me to take on ambitious projects while creating opportunities for other people, too. For me, success isn’t just about the work I can make myself; it’s also about the creative opportunities I can help make possible for others.
Your recent work seems increasingly connected to the environment, community and wellbeing. Are those the areas you would most like to develop further, or is there another direction beginning to emerge?
Yes, I think those themes will always be at the heart of my work, but I’m increasingly interested in exploring them through storytelling.
I feel like there’s a part of my imagination that I haven’t fully explored yet, and I’d love to develop that further. I’m particularly interested in the relationship between humans and animals, and how imagining wildlife experiencing human emotions, relationships and everyday dilemmas might help us understand ourselves a little better. I love the idea of creating characters and stories that are playful and funny, but that also have something meaningful to say about how we live and interact with the world.
I’m also interested in the relationship between people and the environments we inhabit: how the places we move through shape us, how we care for them and how we’re all navigating our own journeys through life. That feels like a natural extension of my interest in maps and exploration, but with more room for narrative and imagination.
I’d love to explore these ideas through a book or another longer-form storytelling project in the future, perhaps bringing together illustration, animals, nature and a little bit of the wonderfully weird human experience.
Ultimately, I’d love to build a creative practice that gives me the freedom to move between commissioned illustration, public art, personal projects and storytelling, while continuing to work with people and organisations who share my values around nature, community and wellbeing.
I think I’m at a really exciting point in my career where I have a strong foundation, but there’s still so much I want to explore. I’m keen to keep following that curiosity and see where it takes me.
