What would happen if we put the objects of our everyday life under an x-ray scanner (like the ones in airports)? The result would probably be very close to the illustrations of Sarah Mafféïs, a French illustrator based in Luxembourg.

Sarah Mafféïs came to illustration after studying industrial design, which is probably where her passion for objects and their forms comes from. After moving to Luxembourg she did in fact work as a furniture designer, always continuing to draw in her spare time, until she decided to open her own shop and print her work, gradually winning over a wider and wider audience. 

The trait that makes her instantly recognisable is a material, partly translucent rendering of what she illustrates, in which bottles, glasses, bubbles and tableware overlap like a luminous collage, and what lies underneath remains visible through what is placed on top. Looking at them, the images produced by x-ray scanners immediately come to mind, where objects lose their opacity, pile up and let the gaze pass through them. 

Food and drink are among her recurring subjects, and a coffee, a brunch with friends or a family dinner are told with a nostalgic, warm tone, while the seasons set the rhythm of her imagery, with waves and shells in the summer months, bare trees and cosy interiors in the winter ones. 

Ideas often arrive suddenly and end up in a notebook, then move on to the iPad, where Sarah Mafféïs builds the composition and reaches the part she likes best, the one in which colours and textures are tried and tried again until everything finds its place, in a balance between the spontaneity of the first sketch and an almost artisanal care for detail.