If you can dream up an artist who embodies playfulness and integrity you will see someone very much like Laura Skilbeck. Laura makes the most whimsical range of greeting cards based on her illustrations and they go straight to your heart. She has been giving so much to her community with awe-inspiring matriarchal ease. Her appreciation for the natural world translates into every sweet creature she paints. Read on to hear her clear and inspiring voice.
1. Please tell us about your heart and what makes you happy.
Oh my heart it loves so many things. Sitting on my doorstep drinking coffee with my friends. Sunlight on my face. Watching colours mix together. Dreaming up ideas and making them into things in the world. Finding wood in skips and painting things on it. Wild pink roses. Tree houses with rope bridges connecting them. Hand painted lettering, hopefully wobbly and on a wooden sign. Playing guitar, and singing like I don’t care. Being a mum. Jumping in big waves. Making things out of cardboard. Laughing until my insides hurt.
2. We are all huge fans of your whimsical illustration style. How did you develop such a clear visual language?
Looking back, it just sort of happened. At some point I felt clearly ‘make what you love and keep making more of what you love in the world.’ I always love paint and especially when the paint is scratchy or dribbly or pink or blue, or layers built up. I like finding new ideas, trying new things, drawing things I don’mark making. There is joy for me in not perfecting every mark, loving them how they land. But then I’m also a perfectionist in that I keep experimenting until the work captures a feeling that I am trying to get to. My visual style feels like my weird jumble sale of all the things that I have loved making. I studied art at university and I’ve always found time to draw and paint. For the last 16 years I’ve been running my little illustration business. In 2021 I was awarded a DYCP grant from the arts council to develop my painting practice. For a year, they paid me a small wage to work two days per week, alongside my illustration practice, just painting. It was so good, I learned so much by just looking and moving paint around. I thought I might just sell paintings after that, but instead my new ideas in painting wove their way back into my illustrations. I still try to make time for that kind of experimental painting and looking.
3. What medium is your favourite to use at the moment?
It’s always really been paint. I like getting paint everywhere. I sometimes love the awful thrill of painting big messy things in public places and not quite knowing how it will turn out, but my heart can’t take too much of it. I’ve just been mixing varnishes and acrylic paint mediums to thin the layers and create transparencies for a big mural. And then a crayon or pencil line just cuts through it all in the best way. I don’t want anyone to teach me how to paint or draw, I just want to see what happens. I am the child that grabs all of the art materials and uses them all at once.
4. How much of your week is focused on creating?
When things are going well, a few hours every day. When business gets busy I try to remember that the fire at the centre of it all is painting and drawing. The bit I love most, the reason I wanted to do this in the first place. Admin can so easily take over from making time to play and experiment and dream and sketch - all of those things that let the best ideas come through. I always try to remember that emails and spreadsheets are easier, and feel safer somehow, but they are way less fun. I can so easily persuade myself that they are more important.
5. What does your average day at work look like?
Every day is different, some days I’m at our little studio on the 3rd floor of an old cotton mill, some days working from home. Through the year it seems to follow a pattern with the seasons. Designing new cards, getting ready for a trade show, working on painting and illustration projects and commissions, building our website, taking photographs, visiting the printers. I try to take time to go to my allotment or go swimming or play music with my friends. In the school holidays I take more days with my girls. Some days are full of emails. Today was full of moving cardboard boxes around all day with my daughters helping me.
6. The love and appreciation of the natural world shines through your work. How do you nurture such tenderness?
That’s lovely, I’m glad it shines through! I think I just do appreciate the natural world. I spend a lot of time on my own at my allotment or walking around the paths and hills where I live in Uppermill. A little valley in the moors, at the northern tip of the Peak District. I love being on my own in nature, being quiet and looking, and I have also spent a lot of time drawing outdoors. You get to know a plant or a leaf in a different way that you never quite forget once you have spent a long time drawing it. It’s so beautiful, it somehow makes me feel like crying when I really look at this world! All of our products are made from recycled paper and our whole production is plastic free and has been since I began in my bedroom in 2010. If you run a business it’s satisfying to see the bigger picture and make sure that it doesn’t harm the natural world. The real gold!
7. We know that you care about your local community and put your energy into making it a better place. Can you tell us a bit more about some of the local initiatives you are involved in?
Yes I do seem to get involved with community projects. I helped to set up the first Saddleworth Art Trail in my community a couple of years ago; lots of little exhibitions in living rooms, cafes, garages, gardens and sheds. In my twenties I was part of a group of artists who made our own free art school, Islington Mill Art Academy in Salford, that is still running today. I recently painted some murals in Oldham and last year I made a big community memories map of Stannington, Sheffield with Eggs Collective.
8. Who are the people you work with?
My main co-worker is my partner Phillip, who has transformed this little business over the last few years by taking most of the packing and invoicing off my plate and allowing me to concentrate on painting and making things. Then we also have some really nice friends and helpers who come in and pack up cards for us and help us out when we are swamped with boxes and admin. Tony at the Post Office. And the printers just around the corner from our house - a lovely old print studio, full of every printing machine going, vintage presses and piles of paper and the best smell of printing ink, like the smell of art school.
9. What is your favourite way to rest and recharge?
I recently switched off everything and went camping in Cornwall for two weeks. It was heavenly. It’s hard to rest when you have work that you love, it’s so easy to always be doing little things. I’m reading Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood with my daughter. I have an old memory of being about six and waking up to my mum saying ‘listen to this fantastic line in my book “my brother was already moving away from the imprecision of words.”’ I loved that idea, it still feels something to do with my life. After my mum died I assumed I wouldn’t get to know what that book was, until I googled it and found out it was Cat’s Eye. And my mum is there now as we read it, in so many ways.
10. Lastly, if you could be a different creature for a day, what would you become?
I guess I would go for something like a fairy or an owl. The possibility of slipping into different dimensions and being able to fly and maybe living in a mushroom or a tree are all appealing to me.
You can find our range of Laura's art here.