Claudia Chinyere Akole is an exhibiting artist, illustrator, cartoonist, designer, animator, and educator based in Sydney, Australia (unceded lands of the Gadigal and Wangal Peoples of the Dharug Language). She works as a freelance illustrator, animator, cartoonist and creates comics and illustrations in her personal practice. She's an art hag who bleeds pink – with work that tends to cover cultural identity, abstraction, and mental health.
Claudia has taught design, comics, and animation workshops at various levels including high school, university, and professional settings. She’s taught illustration and comic school holiday workshops for young people through Western Sydney organisation WestWords in partnership with Big Sky Stories, and Headspace, Broken Hill. She’s taught comic-making workshops to high school students from migrant and refugee backgrounds through the NSW organisation STARTTS. She’s taught animation workshops to high school students through the University of Technology, Sydney for a collaborative student animation project with Carriageworks. She was the 2021 Facilitator for Toolkits: Graphic Narratives, an online graphic storytelling program for young Australian writers. And she’s a Tutor and Research Assistant in the Faculty of Design, Architecture, and Building at University of Technology, Sydney (UTS DAB).
Claudia has established the Tracing Paper Comix style, which involves creating final comic art traditionally using paint markers on multiple layers of tracing paper. Her visual signature consists of bold block colour and abstract line work rendered by hand predominantly in paint and marker mediums.
Claudia is also a part of the organising team for Read To Me – A live graphic storytelling event in Sydney and beyond."
See Claudia Chinyere Akole's poster design for Rare with Google Leadership Academy 2022 here.
