Illustration: Laura Callaghan draws girls you'll want to befriend and run away from

Date
29 August 2013

We first championed Laura Callaghan in January, and the south London-based illustrator’s minutely detailed, super colourful, lady-orientated work is coming out at such a rate that we couldn’t miss an opportunity to flaunt her wares on the site once again.

With an eye for detail that won’t stop short of depicting the cover of Diva magazine, a mainstream lesbian and bisexual publication, flung carelessly on one girl’s bed as she nibbles on a slice of Hawaiian pizza with a female friend, or library shelves full of novels whose intricate spines show most of them to be famous novels centred around powerful female protagonists, Laura’s characters are deeply rooted in external references.

The vast majority of these women have a brilliant taste in literature too which tends to be their chosen channel for self-expression; from Edward Lee’s Portrait of the Psychopath as a Young Woman to Playgirl magazine, these characters seem more like the initial research stage for a Sophia Coppola film than a two dimensional illustration. Couple these myriad cultural references with an incredibly strong visual style and brilliant way with colour, and Laura’s one-of-a-kind work will win you over, and probably have you pinned down on a Missoni-print duvet cover while her best friend paints your toenails red with her ex-boyfriend’s blood, before you even realise what’s going on.

Above

Laura Callaghan: Three’s a Crowd

Above

Laura Callaghan: Breakfast

Above

Laura Callaghan: The Wall

Above

Laura Callaghan: Library

Above

Laura Callaghan: The Pink Room

Share Article

About the Author

Maisie Skidmore

Maisie joined It’s Nice That fresh out of university in the summer of 2013 as an intern before joining full time as an Assistant Editor. Maisie left It’s Nice That in July 2015.

It's Nice That Newsletters

Fancy a bit of It's Nice That in your inbox? Sign up to our newsletters and we'll keep you in the loop with everything good going on in the creative world.