Lia Kantrowitz straddles the hand drawn and digital realm with striking illustrations

Posters, logo designs, sculptures, drawings, video illustrations, apparel… we live in a time when an artist can do it all and more. One such artist is Lia Kantrowitz, a multitalented designer whose interest in design began with catharsis. “I started out just making personal work and that’s still a major portion of the work I put out, and is the main driver for techniques I’ve learned,” says Lia. “Drawing and making art is cathartic for me, and is less about the subject matter and more about a feeling I’m trying to evoke.” Lia’s style mutates wonderfully between flash tattoos and graphite renderings of barbed wires, dragons and tarantulas. One moment, her animations recall postcards from the wild west. In another, she evokes the vintage psychedelic imagery of Eiichi Yamamoto’s Belladonna Of Sadness.

Lia puts aside the grunge DIY aesthetic for something clean and collected with editorial designs that bloom in primary colours or monochromatic apparel works designed for screenprinting ease. Currently based in Queens, New York, there’s an urban element from Manhattan’s spunkiest borough that shines in Lia’s work, a punk earnestedness that gives it a lot of teeth. “I used to straddle both the hand drawn and digital realm, but in the past couple of years I’ve pivoted to mostly doing everything by hand,” says Lia. Feeling technological fatigue, Lia spends as much time as possible drawing, only using the computer to finalise work. “I want art and illustration to remain a therapeutic practice and working on my computer all the time feels antithetical to that.” With images as evocative as barking dogs, embracing swans and fairies playing giddy up, Lia is successful in allowing emotional stories to bleed out.