Gallery: The Fantastical Creations of Kitt Lauro
Kitt Lauro will be one of a couple dozen artists exhibiting at Pride Alley during this year's Awesome Con from April 4 to 6.
“I love being able to meet the people who are seeing my art and have conversations with them,” says Kitt Lauro, one of the 34 artists populating this year’s Pride Alley at the upcoming Awesome Con. They particularly enjoy giving advice to young budding artists who stop by the booth with their parents.
It makes sense, as Lauro is currently “onboarding as a substitute teacher.” They create and sell their artwork online as a successful side gig. The pieces, forged in watercolors, are fanciful and dense with color. “I don’t use watercolor in a very traditional manner,” says the nonbinary, asexual 31-year-old. “A lot of watercolor is loose and gestural. I’m very strict with where I have structure and line work.”
The works — which frequently incorporate flowers (Lauro worked at a garden center for five years), snakes, and skulls — are “semi-realistic, semi-fantastical,” says Lauro, adding with a shy laugh, “it’s very hard for me to describe myself and style.”
The pieces are both alluring and striking: take the bold heron or the snuggling multi-colored otters, for instance. Sometimes, Lauro will explore a single color, as they do with a red panda, delicately rendering it in various shades of green. Other times, they’ll mix unexpected components, one of the most powerful being a deer with coal-black eyes whose antlers are intertwined with snakes.
“That’s called ‘Dangerous Company,'” they say. “The snakes are harmless. And when I was creating that, I didn’t paint eye shines into the deer’s eyes. Deer can actually be pretty dangerous. You would think that the snakes are dangerous, but it is not the snakes, because those are actually a harmless species.”
Her works include a wide variety of Pokémon and other fan-related art, but Lauro never strays too far from their chosen style. “Even when I’m doing fan art or Pokémon stuff, I use a lot of references from life. Because if I’m gonna do fan art, it’s gotta feel like me.”
Browse more of Kitt Lauro’s artwork and shop online at queenkittkat-shop.fourthwall.com.
Awesome Con is April 4-6 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. For more information or to purchase badges, visit www.awesome-con.com.
Keep scrolling to see more of Kitt Lauro’s works.
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