Rafael López (born August 8, 1961, in Mexico City, Mexico) is an internationally recognized illustrator and artist. To reflect the lives of all young people, his illustrations bring diverse characters to children's books. As a children's book illustrator, he has received three Pura Belpré Award medals from the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), and REFORMA in 2020 for Dancing Hands: How Teresa Carreño Played the Piano for President Lincoln, Drum Dream Girl in 2016 and Book Fiesta! in 2010. He created the National Book Festival Poster for the Library of Congress and was a featured book festival speaker at this event.
His book illustrations are the recipient of the American Library Association Schneider Family Book Award, Silver Medal from the Society of Illustrators New York, Original Art Exhibition, the Jane Addams Children's Book Award and the Tomás Rivera Book Award along with three Pura Belpré honors and two Américas Book Awards.
López has illustrated thirteen stamps for the United States Postal Service and served as the first Guest Artist of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. In 2023 he created a Google Doodle celebrating the life of trailblazing Mexican American media pioneer and civil rights activist Raoul A. Cortez who gave a voice and presence to Latinos through radio and television. The artist was selected by the Obama/Biden campaign to create two official posters at Artists for Obama in an effort to secure the pivotal Latino vote in key swing states.
Education
In Mexico City, López attended the Manuel Bartolome Cossio, an experimental Freinet school where he began drawing and painting at an early age. He attended after school workshops there in photography, painting, puppet making, carpentry, ceramics, tablas huicholas and theatre. In school he was able to study classical music and also learned to play a variety of folkloric instruments including the quena, guitar and drums taught by members of Los Folkloristas. Music is a prominent theme found in his illustrations, books and postal stamps. Both his parents were architects and professors at UNAM. As a child, he often visited the flea market with his father looking for used books and the family had a large collection that lined the walls of their home from floor to ceiling. López regularly traveled by metro over an hour to visit the library, immersed himself in books, especially art books and grew up with a fascination for images from a variety of cultures. The illustrator describes Mexico as a place where there are hundreds of myths and legends as well as 67 native languages. This early exposure to diversity and storytelling shaped his thinking. When he was 10 years old, his parents sent him to Exeter, England to live with Mexican-born conceptual and performance artist Felipe Ehrenberg. There he explored drawing and learned to make books and use a printing press. His first book was an illustrated journal where he recorded his experiences to share with his family. In 1982, he left Mexico to study illustration at the ArtCenter College of Design, in Los Angeles where he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Illustration.
Career
After college he worked as an illustrator in Los Angeles, and then converted an old car garage in an industrial loft building in the East Village of downtown San Diego into his home and studio. He became involved in social design projects, founding the Urban Art Trail and painting large-scale murals to improve blighted areas and reclaim neighborhoods. A lifelong passion for books eventually led him to pursue children's book illustration with a focus on diversity and inclusion. He has taught illustration for ArtCenter College of Design and San Diego City College.