Welcome to the last series of Pride month! All this week, I will be sharing blog posts featuring different LGBTQ artists in a range of disciplines. Check out all the LGBTQ creatives worthy of support here!
Who is Kayleigh?
Kayleigh is lesbian non-binary woman (she/they) in her early twenties, an illustrator from Michigan about to make a move to Florida. They have been drawing as a young kid, but started taking it a little more seriously by the time they got to middle school, when Kayleigh wanted to move to Japan to draw manga.
In college, Kayleigh joined a theatre group and began writing plays. Since then, she has transformed a play into a pseudo-comic, The End, which is her current project. Kayleigh also works on zines whenever possible and is always creating! Although her illustrations are very narrative-driven, the visuals usually serve as a base for her work. Even with their writing, Kayleigh explained how their visual-mind is thinking of how the words would look drawn or acted out.
Identity and Work
The biggest influence identity has on Kayleigh’s work is the inspiration to create things they want to see. As a queer person, that means creating content that queer people (like herself) can connect to, as quality queer content can be quite difficult to find. They create a lot of stories about women loving women, or with a focus on gender, because it’s authentic to her own experience.
Kayleigh discussed how their current project’s inclusion of two non-binary characters working through their experiences with gender helped her examine her own experience and work through it. She also looks inward for other themes and subjects, like mental illness and self-image. At more of a surface level, Kayleigh loves to work within fantasy genres with ghosts and create illustrations based off of D&D characters, but their identity has a strong influence on the narrative base behind the work.
Where to support
You can start by following Kayleigh on Twitter and reviewing all her work at her website. Kayleigh’s commissions are open! You can contact her about commissions via email @ k.vanoveren@gmail.com. Some prices regarding prices and options available can be find in the gallery below.
a lesbian and her laptop 