I’ve been vegan for three and a half years, but have only been an activist for two, and I aim to get more involved. I went vegan after being exposed to animal rights conversations and ‘real life vegans’ soon after starting my foundation year at Leeds College of Art. When I moved to Edinburgh I met more activists and animal rights became a much larger focus in my life — it is now the sun which everything else orbits around. I’ve just graduated with an illustration BA Hons degree from Edinburgh College of Art, and now I am planning to dedicate even more time and energy to animal rights and other social justice causes. Over the past year I have immersed myself in the world of sabotaging fox hunts and this is a form of activism that has really shifted my perspective on life — it has shown me the true importance of being on the front line of animal abuse and doing everything humanly possible to stop it.
I aim to produce work that is emotive, educational, and sometimes deliberately provocative. I use illustration to shed light on specific acts of animal abuse, morally inconsistent human behaviour and to fuel conversations about how we perceive and treat non-human animals. I combine relatively realistic rendering with impossible, whimsical compositions and some visual metaphors thrown in there too. Over the past year, I’ve started introducing more text into my work in order to add an educational twist and to allow my drawings to function as illustrations of other peoples’ quotes.