Knarelle Beard was born in Forbes, NSW and moved to Sydney as a young child. After finishing high school, and with no formal training, she began work in a commercial art studio. Three years later, in 1974, she moved to Adelaide where she did freelance work in design and illustration, including the development of theological teaching materials for adults (using visuals as an aid to learning) for Crossways International, which was then based in Adelaide (now Minneapolis, USA). This included Crossways (3rd edn, 1994), The Divine Drama (2nd edn, 1993) and See Through the Scriptures (1993).
Her favourite work is with books - writing, editing, illustrating and designing. She enjoys creating beautiful and challenging picture books for older children and adults. "As a younger reader growing up", she recalls, "I was delighted when stories in books became longer and more complex. But I was disappointed to realize that this meant the colour illustrations became fewer, faded to black and white, and eventually disappeared altogether, as if visual pleasure is lost to adult eyes." She illustrated the original cover for Space Demons by Gillian Rubinstein (qv) and this cover artwork was also used for Space Demons: The Play and the ABC Spoken Word cassette of Space Demons. In 1992 she edited and illustrated Something Horrid, a story for 8 to 12 year olds which was formally given to her by the author on condition that the author remained anonymous. She has since been experimenting with computer images and designs.
