Fiona Moodie was born in Cape Town on 6th May, 1952. She grew up on an apple farm in Elgin where she attended a farm school of 24 pupils until the age of 8, before leaving to become a boarder at St Cyprian’s School, Cape Town. She matriculated in 1968. She obtained a BA degree from UCT in 1971 and later a Secondary Teacher’s Diploma from the same university.
After university Fiona left South Africa for Europe. She taught English in Madrid and travelled in Greece, living for a while in an uninhabited monastery on the island of Siphnos and drawing.
She had always wanted to write and illustrate children’s books and with her parents’ support she was able to attend the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris (1975) while simultaneously working as a psychiatrist’s receptionist in return for accommodation.
By chance in Paris she met an Austrian book illustrator who advised her to go to the Bologna Children’s Book Fair with a portfolio of work. At Bologna she met several encouraging editors and many European illustrators. As a result in 1976 she began living outside a small village called Rugolo in Northern Italy, in the farm house of the Czech film animator and illustrator Stephan Zavrel. His home was an open house for artists who came to stay and work for various periods. There were many illustrators and publishers passing through; Czech, Polish, Belgian, German, Spanish, Italian, Swiss and English. From meeting, watching and sometimes working with all these people, Fiona Moodie learned about illustrating and making books.
In 1980 she left Rugolo and went to live and work in Provence. In 1981 she married South African Sean Baumann and returned to Cape Town where she continued to write and illustrate children’s books. In 1983 Fiona and her husband moved to the U.K. where Sean worked as a doctor in Wales and London for 5 years. Their twin daughters were born in 1986 in London.
Political changes in South Africa led to the family returning to Cape Town where they have lived since 1992.
Fiona Moodie has been influenced by the painterly Eastern European illustrators such as the Polish Josef Wilkon and the Czech Jiri Trnka as well as Zavrel. These artists made pictures using a variety of techniques (aquarelle, pastel, oil, acrylic, collage) that could stand on their own and be exhibited as art works, independent of text. This painterly approach appealed to Moodie, although the challenge is to keep the text and illustration in balance. The story is really the most important part, even of a picture book.
Other influences were Max Velthuijs for the gentle spirit and aesthetic appeal of his work, and Janosch for his warmth and humour. She also has great admiration for many other illustrators: Quentin Blake, David McKee, Tony Ross ,William Steig, for example, and in South Africa, Niki and Jude Daly and Piet Grobler.
