Effigies explores different parts that make the self and portrays these as individual characters, and I was asked to give my (surreal) interpretation of what these might look like.

 

Ricardo’s poetry has strong storytelling tendencies, such as in The Cacti Queen or The Migrant, and I leaned heavily into that aspect of his work with the illustrations. He often uses comparisons and metaphors which immediately transport you into the surreal world and melancholic feeling he is building.

 

In Lady Death, you can find the foxgloves that “fade to black from pink” in her skirt; The Noctambulant is a lost 1920’s lady without her Gatsby, the life of the party, and in the Cacti Queen, some plants start looking like her subjects. All these already very visual elements of Ricardo’s poetry appear in the illustrations, just as they do in his poetry, as intoxicating amalgamations, so that the reader is completely involved into the dream-like, nostalgic, romantic and engulfing worlds that he is building.

 

It becomes a magical, transformative and revealing experience to find all or some of these characters within yourself as the reader, and I hope the imagery holds your hand through this process, being simultaneously admonishing and comforting as necessary.