Neighbors In The News: Reportage Illustrator & Pratt Professor Veronica Lawlor

Pratt professor Veronica Lawlor was featured on Ozy, an online magazine covering trends in art and design, earlier this week.

Off campus, Veronica works as something of a traditional illustrator (she’s worked for comic book publishers, fashion editorials, and major retailers like Lord & Taylor), and as a reportage illustrator, going live to the scene of news and drawing what she sees in the moment–which gives her work an incredibly dynamic feel.

In this role, she’s sketched the pope, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and a series on world hunger. She’s even the only artist known for drawing the events of September 11 as they unfolded.

“You become almost a conduit for whatever emotions are going around,” she tells the magazine of that day in 2001. “I just automatically started drawing. I really felt like I was experiencing it through the drawings.”

How does Veronica keep busy when she’s not at Pratt or on scene? She’s a co-founder of the Dalvero Academy, and belongs to Urban Sketchers as well as Studio 1482.

You can learn more about her work (and see her breathtaking drawings) at Ozy, as well as on her website.

Photo by Greg Betza