WHO AM I?

I’m Esther Gómez Madrid —Esther con Hache (Esther with an H, even if it’s silent)— an illustrator and visual storyteller from the Campamento neighborhood in Madrid. I grew up in the 1980s, when military boots still hung from power lines to mark soldiers’ discharge. Very early on I knew my calling was to tell stories: I observe, think, draw, and narrate through images.

My neighborhood shaped the way I look: the quiet beauty of vacant lots, long narrow sidewalks beside empty barracks, the old N-5 cutting through as a border, and two shores stitched together by underpasses. These everyday landscapes—now at risk of disappearing—beat on the surface and underneath, waiting to be told.

At home, no book was off-limits if I could reach it with my height or my wits. From that childhood reading chaos at my grandparents’ house grew a fertile mix of references that still nourishes me. Through my illustrations, I try to share that same pleasure and genuine sense of wonder for stories and images.

A name is something you earn. That’s why I sign as Esther con Hache (even if it’s silent). If you’d like to know how I earned mine, come along…

PILLAR 1: ILLUSTRATION

I earned my BFA from the Complutense University of Madrid the same year The Bride took her revenge on Bill and the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad in cinemas. Three years later, I completed a Diploma in Graphic Design at IED Madrid—around the time Harry Potter was training Dumbledore’s Army. On both paths I learned the craft of visual language. I’m still learning: there’s always more to discover, and I hope that focused curiosity stays with me—it means I’m still passionate about my work. I also completed Iconi’s now-discontinued Master’s in Illustrated Children’s Picture Books and a wide range of workshops that deepened my visual storytelling and creative processes, learning from professionals in illustration and comics.

Since 2023, I’ve collaborated with Fundación Adecco on a guide for HR departments to support the workplace inclusion of people with mental health conditions, and on the Aflora campaign, focused on raising awareness about invisible disabilities. In 2024, Fundación Prevent and Esade awarded my creative communication project Con hache aunque sea muda as one of the three best entrepreneurial initiatives in the 2023–24 “Aprende y Emprende” program. In 2025, I took part—alongside a wonderful collective of Ukrainian artists—in the Catena Art Artistic Residency, culminating in a group exhibition at Imaguru (Madrid).

My first publications came with Santillana and Baula (children’s textbooks). For SM, I illustrated the—now discontinued—series “Nina y su familia.” With Anaya I’ve published several children’s and YA titles, including Fede quiere ser pirata (Málaga City Children’s Literature Prize 2011 for Pablo Aranda’s text, with a Korean edition), Mi primer libro de Gloria Fuertes, X-Leonora, and La torre de Babel, all in the Sopa de Libros collection. Edelvives continues to publish Gotas de cristal (Ala Delta). Pum pum, hice daño a la luna (NubeOcho) has been published in the United States, Turkey, and China, and received Second Prize at the 2017 International Latino Book Awards.

Selected group exhibitions:
2025 — Catena Art Artistic Residency with a collective of Ukrainian artists, Imaguru (Madrid).
2016 — Un pequeño gran planeta. Mad3, Galería Mad is Mad (Madrid).

Pillar 2: ART EDUCATION

Alongside my studies and my work as an illustrator, I developed a deep interest in art education. I’ve always believed that looking at and discovering the world with an open, non-judgmental gaze—one that welcomes aesthetic experience and imagination—enriches us and helps shape who we are.

For six wonderful years I worked as a contemporary art educator, mainly at La Casa Encendida, where I engaged visitors—adults, children, and teenagers—in dialogue to bring them closer to contemporary artworks. I sought to link their interests with the themes of each exhibition and to share my fascination, sense of wonder, and the questions—often without a single answer—that art raises. I also facilitated creative activities that allowed participants to experience and connect with their own abilities through hands-on visual art making.

I likewise worked for seven years as an educator and collaborator with PEAC (the Enrichment Program for High-Ability Students) of the Community of Madrid. From artistic and humanistic perspectives, I designed and delivered content and activities to introduce primary school students to art and visual language, and to the pleasure of storytelling and reading through curiosity and wonder.

As a freelance art educator, I have led workshops and guided visits at institutions such as the Museo Reina Sofía, the Museo del Prado, and the Fundación ICO, partnering with various organizations and companies to bring art and creativity to children, teenagers, families, and diverse groups, including migrants and people with disabilities.

Pillar 3: mental health

If you’ve made it this far, I’d like to share how I earned my name: Esther, with an H—even if it’s silent. I’m a woman, mother, daughter, friend, illustrator, and art educator who has also lived for over ten years with a mental health diagnosis. I lead an ordinary life, and I also bring the experience of having gone through—and understood—these processes from the inside.

Like the silent “h” in Spanish—like the one in my own name—there were years when I was mute: present, but quiet. Even so, I didn’t stand still. I learned to live with my condition, to accept and integrate it as part of me, and little by little I rebuilt my voice—both personal and visual. This website is part of that journey back to my natural language: images.

During that period, less active in illustration, I accompanied others in their own paths, sharing tools from the visual and plastic arts to say what words sometimes can’t. For more than four years I launched the Creative Workshop at AMAFE—even through the pandemic and lockdown—fostering expressive skills, learning visual language, and weaving ties with the city’s cultural life through exhibition visits I facilitated for my peers.

I have led workshops for Fundación Adecco, designed for people with psychosocial disabilities, and until mid-2025 I worked as a Workshop Instructor at the Arturo Soria Labor Rehabilitation Center (Fundación Hermanas Hospitalarias). There I had the privilege of confirming, in practice, the value of art education and artistic expression within recovery processes.

An important note: I have deep respect for therapists and art therapists—they have helped me, too. I am not a therapist and I don’t provide therapy. As an art educator and mediator with lived experience in mental health, I facilitate activities, workshops, and spaces for expression, offering communication tools through the language I know best—the visual and plastic arts—for those who often feel words fall short. My role is to open new channels of expression and to accompany creative processes with respect and care—feeling and enjoying the work as we go.