Joanna Layla Mixes Fine Art and Fashion
What inspires your artwork?
The concepts and themes that inspire my artwork are fashion, sustainability and individual beauty. I am passionate about how visual identity is expressed through style; and am drawn to capture fashion’s zeitgeist on the page.
What is your creative process?
When I create art, I start work quite intuitively and instinctively, with an idea sparked by something I have seen – like a look on the street, a face or pose. I get my ideas down fast with energy and use those early gestures as the foundation of the final artwork. If I am working with an art director or brand, the inspiration may be a moodboard or collection, but my process of creating a fast and loose response in brushstrokes and ink then layered with a key detail or colour is the same.
What’s your style as an artist?
I describe my artistic style as simultaneously simple and complex – a tangible fashion reality mixed with something a little abstract. My fashion illustration style is an extension of my aesthetic – minimal yet with a deep interest in identity, form, and texture. And maybe most powerfully, a style that is hand-drawn, fleeting, and fast — enjoying the mistakes and the unexpected that give artwork feeling.
How do you want your work to make people feel?
Love, light, brave, beautiful… to feel something
If you weren’t an artist what would you be?
A contemporary dancer…
What do you listen to while you work?
Mary Ann Hobbs — any selection or mix she curates
What do you do when you want to feel creative?
When I want to feel creative, I like to draw my way into creativity, move, dance, make marks on paper, find a way in. Or paint with my little boy, Ofili.
Who is your dream collector for your artwork?
The person I would be most excited about collecting my artwork is any of the art directors or stylists I find hugely inspiring working across fashion and interiors — like Pernille Teisbaek, Grace Coddington or Lucinda Chambers.
How do you define fine art?
To me, the definition of fine art is visual artwork created by hand that inspires the viewer – provoking love, exciting the imagination, or expressing feeling visually on the page.
