My art is also available to see and buy in person at The Leith Collective in Ocean Terminal, Edinburgh, UK EH6 6JJ.
How it all started…
Kellas Campbell is a member of the Society of Feline Artists and her work has featured in home decor magazines as well as in Singapore’s Tatler Magazine: in an interview with the Affordable Art Fair director, he selected ‘Time to Leave the Nest’ as one of his favourite purchases. Along with artists such as Mark Ryden and the creator of Pusheen, Campbell’s work appeared in the 2019 coffee-table book, Cats Rock: Felines in Contemporary Art and Pop Culture by Elizabeth Daley
Kellas grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba and outside Chicago, Illinois. Her trusty Siamese cat, Charlie I, was by her side throughout. She lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with her rescue cat, Noir. After 14 years together, Charlie II, her muse and model — she is the cat who looks at you from almost all her drawings — died on October 22, 2019.
Helen Campbell’s drawing of her daughter as a teenager
Kellas learned to draw from her mother, Helen, a commercial artist. When her mother was hospitalized in 2004, Kellas returned to drawing. She started with frogs and other creatures from National Geographic magazines in the ICU waiting room. Although Helen was unable to fully wake up from a coma, whenever Kellas had a drawing to show her, she opened her eyes and appraised it silently. Helen died in 2004.
A year later, Kellas adopted her cat muse Charlie II, and began drawing her. When they moved to London, she took her drawings of Charlie to a local frame store, as putting them on the wall made more sense than storing them in boxes. The store owner asked if he could try selling them, and so her vocation as an artist began. She sells prints and accepts commissions at her website.
Charlie died of lymphoma on October 23, 2019, a couple months after Kellas’s father, Graham, died. So, a household of four went down to two; beautiful Noir, whom Kellas “rescued” in Edinburgh in 2015, returned the favour when Kellas was at her lowest. Together, they amuse each other while waiting out the pandemic.