Chantal is a Canadian illustrator who was born in northern Ontario and currently lives in Westport, ON. She has been drawing and painting as long as she can remember, and after convincing her skeptical parents that art could be a viable career, she followed a circuitous path through various post-secondary arts-related programs to finally land on illustration (which she studied at Parsons The New School for Design in NYC)...and then everything fell into place.

But that didn't stop her from taking another roundabout route to being a freelance illustrator...by way of starting a letterpress company, Papillon Press, where she designed and printed her own line of stationery for 8 years.

After all that, Chantal now works as a freelance illustrator, focusing on editorial and book illustration, sharing a studio behind her house with her illustrator husband (Joel Kimmel) and her two beagles, Peanut and Pistache. In her spare time she obsesses over historical costuming/dressmaking, loves to travel with her husband and do plein-air sketching, reading books (especially beautifully illustrated ones) and tending to her home, which she is attempting to transform into a William Morris shrine.