Tim Lahan’s new works reduce recognisable shapes to create “tension and movement”

Illustrator Tim Lahan is a firm favourite in the It’s Nice That studio. One of the key reasons for this is his ability to convey a positive mood and message in his drawings, consistently using an innovative colour palette. His works are varied, ideal for illustrating one of our smiles for Printed Pages and even the horoscopes for Elle.

Tim’s most recent project Fillings, was “born out of curiosity of how to reduce an object to an icon or symbol, which is a very flat and static thing, yet still creates a sense tension or movement in the image,” he tells It’s Nice That. “I think of these almost as shells, where the conveyed object is clear but has been hollowed out in order to hold the abstracted shape inside of it.”

In the illustrators “shells” you can recognise shapes of clouds, strawberries and plants, filled with a contrasting shape that almost pixelates them. “The icons in each piece are rigid and confident while the insides struggle to fill in the empty space completely or uniformly.” The painted works display Tim’s brush strokes, conveying a personable approach, and as a viewer you can imagine the illustrator painstakingly constructing each shape delicately. “For me, this speaks of the inherent awkwardness of life and living but celebrates it as well.”