Despite their intricacy, Lisk Feng’s artworks maintain a playfulness that appeals to both children and adults. She often incorporates sweeping landscapes, delicate line work, and subtle patterns to build immersive scenes. Her illustrations are imbued with a dreamlike quality that invites prolonged viewer engagement.
As part of her inspiration she likes to collect vintage children's books from all over the world. When she flicks through them, she says she feels the history of the children and what they were doing long ago. And it's then that Lisk Feng realises some things never change. She decided to be an illustrator as a young girl in China.
“I started publishing in school at a very young age. I entered multiple competitions and eventually a young adult magazine noticed me and invited me to draw a series of illustrations for them," she tells Artspace. "Then I got another invite from another magazine, also for middle schoolers. I drew lots of high school diary series. They used my work for two years.”
After that, she decided to apply for an illustration major. “I felt like I was already doing it, so why not try the schools?” She was accepted into the China Academy of Art and after she graduated, came to the US and studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art’s grad program.
Lisk Feng signing Tropical Reverie, 2026 - photography Garrett Carroll
In a glittering career, Feng has collaborated with numerous high-profile clients, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Apple. Her editorial illustrations frequently address complex themes, ranging from cultural identity to environmental sustainability. In addition to her varied editorial and commercial work, she is the illustrator of Phaidon’s Our World series of books, Our World, Our Seasons, Our Galaxy and Our Underwater World and the new Our Prehistoric Planet.
“Certain elements in my life really matter to me and inspire me," she says. "For instance, I notice that I feel and respond to nature differently from a lot of my friends or other people. I notice small things. My brain is a little busy. I have ADHD. I think too much. I look at a sunset, and people say, ‘Oh, how beautiful’, but I am looking for where the purple goes. Nature is something I learn from. I’ve never been forced to study nature, but I absorb energy from nature. I try to play with the light differently so that it looks kind of dream-core.”
Lisk Feng - Tropical Reverie, 2026 - photography Garrett Carroll
Feng has received multiple accolades, including awards from the Society of Illustrators, Communication Arts, and American Illustration. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and design festivals globally, affirming her status as a significant new voice in contemporary illustration
And now, in a career of many firsts, she is the first children’s illustrator to create a work for Artspace and Phaidon’s prestigious edition program.
Tropical Reverie, 2026 is a limited-edition print of 100. The signed archival pigment is printed on Somerset Velvet Watercolor paper measuring 15 inches in diameter on a paper size of 17 x 17 inches. It is priced $400.
Conceived as a circular composition, the rainforest scene in this edition is featured in the Phaidon Kids book, Our World, Feng’s first collaboration with Phaidon, and a pivotal project for the artist in which she invented a whole new color style.
Lisk Feng signing Tropical Reverie, 2026 - photography Garrett Carroll
The work is conceived, in part, to be a rediscovery of the world’s largest tropical rainforests, the Amazon, for all ages to explore and enjoy.
This collaboration with Lisk Feng celebrates Phaidon’s children's books and the Phaidon Kids program. Tropical Reverie, 2026 invites both seasoned collectors, emerging collectors, parents, and children to experience illustration as a collectible art form, while also offering a starting point for young art collections.
On the eve of the launch of this groundbreaking new edition we asked Lisk a few questions about the edition and her own childhood art memories.
Lisk Feng - Tropical Reverie, 2026 - photography Garrett Carroll
What did you have on your bedroom walls as a child?
I lived with my grandparents until I was about 12. In my grandparents' apartment it was those cheap calendars featuring armies or giant images of fruit. My mom was a single mom, she worked as a college teacher, but also as an advertising billboard painter.
I didn't have any money for hanging anything I liked, so I painted on the wall and used that as my canvas. I remember I drew a tree, a bit like a Christmas tree. Then I would ‘put’ more things onto the tree, small objects, such as Koalas or any cute, small animal toys I could find. Cheap ones, free ones. I just ‘hung’ them on top of the tree. That was the first art on my wall.
After I graduated, and I left my grandparents’ home, I finally had my own bedroom, so I had my mother's oil paintings on the wall. They usually depicted nature. We lived next to the ocean, and there were lots of river and ocean paintings. I vividly remember one with a boat and a sunset. That piece is carved into my memory from childhood. I think that's why the biggest thing for me still is to draw nature.
Lisk Feng with Tropical Reverie, 2026 - photography Garrett Carroll
Who were the artists that inspired you growing up?
My first inspiration at art college was Tatsuro Kiuchi, a Japanese print maker, painter, and illustrator. But the very first person who influenced me as a child was Georges Seurat, the oil painter. My mom always told me his work has a limitation to it. I still remember this. She said, 'when you do little dots, at some point you cannot do anymore, you have a limit of details that you can do. And that makes it blurry and dreamy'. So, I looked at, and studied, his work from an early age. I had a gigantic book I would flip through, and I would look at his nature drawings. I learned about how when purple, green, and brown are all in one spot, they can create new colors. The eye tricks you. I think that early experience is why I'm still obsessed with ideas like that.
I believe that one color influences the whole thing. When you think of an apple, the apple is red. When you think about sky, sky is blue, and maybe an Asian person's skin is fair, and stone is gray. So, you have this stereotypical color palette in your head. But Seurat’s work showed that humans can be blue, a rock can be purple, the sun can be gray. Anything can happen if you use the right color to combine them. When I noticed that, I started to use less stereotypical color palettes. I started to explore different, stronger color combinations.
Lisk Feng with Tropical Reverie, 2026- photography Garrett Carroll
How and why did you choose this particular image?
It was the first children’s edition, so we had a lot of ideas. We talked a lot about what the image should be before finally deciding. We wanted it to be a bit ‘planty’, a little like the Amazon, and to have lots of diverse animals crawling, climbing, and holding different things, in the scene. I was trying to find this perfect harmony between plants and animals. We wanted it to be interesting to hang on the wall, and for children to stare at for a long time.
What do you think will resonate with parents and carers who will buy this edition?
Because so many of us live in the city, I think parents want to bring some color into their home. I also wanted the image to appeal to adults who still hang on to their childhood dreams. The rainforest is so attractive, even to an adult audience. And there are also classic wallpaper designs that feature leaves, flora, animals. So, for the first children’s edition, we wanted to do something that was classic as well as intriguing. And green is a great color too!
Lisk Feng signing Tropical Reverie, 2026 - photography Garrett Carroll
What do you think kids will love about it?
That it’s an invitation to use their imagination, I hope. It's a very special size. It's a special shape. It's round. We don't see that often. And because it's round, it feels a bit like a camera lens. It's like a small window for kids to look through. I want kids to want to explore a little bit, and I want them to read the book, or to want to learn more about the rainforest and the animals inside the image.
Another part of my thinking behind the image is that little kids stare at one thing for a long time. When I was young, I had lots of children's books. But the ones I liked most were the slightly puzzling ones that had lots of things going on in them. I would just look at the pages, tracing my eyes over the shadow shapes of the trees, or the shadows of lights on the wall during nighttime, when I couldn’t fall asleep.
So, this painting maybe could be something of what I call an eye target, when a child wants to trace something, or wants to stare at something. They can look at it for a long time, and hopefully it will carve itself into their mind as well. And they might realise that they really like the forest or nature when they grow up, because of this print.
Lisk Feng with Tropical Reverie, 2026 - photography Garrett Carroll
Tell us more about the book this image comes from.
It’s from the first book of a series called Our World. And this piece is probably one of my favourite pieces from that book. This first book is particularly important to me because I invented a color style for the whole series and all the pieces from that book were an experiment for me. I remember I was working on this rainforest image in the school library where I was teaching. And it was there that I developed a system. It was right at the start of something. It was not so matured at that moment, but I figured things out from there.
For the second, and the third book—especially from the start of the third book—my style evolved and became more detailed. But this first one was a little more relaxed. And that moment cannot be repeated. So that was a very special experience for me.
Talking of experiences this is the first time Phaidon and Artspace have done an edition with a children’s illustrator. How does it feel?
Very exciting! I've been to the Phaidon office to sign the prints, and I saw the Yoko Ono edition, and all the prints on the wall. All these editions by famous artists. I'm very proud to be part of it. And I think mine is the largest of all of them! I really think it's so special that a parent might buy this for their child.
Take a closer look at Tropical Reverie, 2026.
