Petra Štefanková is a Slovak illustrator, digital artist, designer and art director. She has worked in animation, advertising and publishing industry.
She studied graphic design at Jozef Vydra's School of Applied Art in Bratislava in 1993-1997, visual communication at Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava in 1997-2003 a film and tv graphics at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in 2002-2003.
In December 2007 she won Channel 4's 4Talent Award for young creatives from all creative industries in the United Kingdom and presented her work at GRAPHITE 2007, the digital art exhibition and conference organised by the North American and Australian chapter of the ACM SIGGRAPH at the University of Western Australia in Perth. Her work was exposed widely on shows all around the world (in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, various Japanese cities, London in the UK, US, Argentina, Columbia, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Alaska, Hong Kong, China, Belgium, Turkey etc.). Australian curator Andrew Chew selected her work for GAS Project exhibition 2007 along with a special guest Doze Green from NYC, one of the Top Ten Visual Artists in the world according to Stylus magazine rating. Her work has been presented by the Museum of computer art based in NYC and Heritage Museum in Hong Kong.
In July 2007 she was selected for exhibition at Images 31: The Best Of British Illustration in London College of Communication (which repeated again in 2009) a published in 200 Best Illustrators Worldwide 2007/08 by Luerzer, Expose 6 - The Best of International Digital Art by Ballistic Publishing in 2008. From a thousand of entrants she was also selected to exhibit within the digital art on environment issues exhibition Common Ground 2008 running across China (with start in Beijing) and galleries in the US in 2010.
In April 2008 at age 29 she was invited to join Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts in London, the 250 years old organisation which has been at the forefront of economic, political, social, artistic thinking, a catalyst for constructive change.
In July 2008 she presented her illustrative work at ICON5 Illustration Salon in Roosevelt Hotel off Madison Avenue in New York City. Other public presentations include Les E-Magiciens, European Digital Animation festival organized by SUPINFOCOM in France in November 2008, Pecha Kucha Night in Brighton in November 2009, discussion at DOX: Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague in June 2010 and ICON6 Illustration Salon in Langham Hotel in Pasadena, CA in July 2010 and some other talks and lectures.
Publications include Visual Artist at Work by Michael Fleishman, Centage (2009, US), Vector Graphics and Illustration, A master class in digital image-making by Steven Withrow and Jack Harris, Rotovision (2008, UK), Planet Alert, Revista Colectiva (2009, Costa Rica), A DGPH Project: The Ark, IdN / Systems Design, (2009, Hong Kong), Channel 4's 4Talent magazine 8 and 9.