Art, Fear, & What the Cards (Yes—the Ones She Illustrated) Hold: An Interview with Evangeline Gallagher
By Court Ludwick
Evangeline Gallagher is no stranger to horror. The Baltimore-based illustrator has designed book covers for Isaac Fellman’s Dead Collections (Penguin Random House), The Gathering Dark: An Anthology of Folk Horror (Page Street Publishing), and more—and her personal work features everything from cosmic knots to monsters at the drive-in.
With clients like the New York Times, The New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, and The Guardian—also Pearl Jam (?!)—she’s pretty much the coolest ever. We talked recently with Evangeline about her art, her process, and what the future holds. Here is our Q&A with the artist.
Illustration by Evangeline Gallagher for Texas Monthly.
How did you get into illustrating?
I’ve been drawing since I was a kid. My mom is an artist, and both of my parents were thankfully very supportive of me being a weird, artsy kid. Pretty much all I did was draw, or read—when I wasn’t reading I was drawing and vice versa. I got really interested in comics from a pretty young age, and I definitely wanted to be more of a cartoonist when I went to art school, but I found more satisfaction in illustration work and printmaking. Comics are so, so hard and time consuming to make. Much respect for comics people. Covid pushed me full time into freelancing.
Are there any mediums you’d like to experiment more with in the future?
I would love to do more printmaking! I need to make some woodcuts. I’ve always had an affinity for print. The challenge right now is figuring out how to print in a home studio. My setup is very DIY, so I can’t make anything perfect (which is kind of great? also frustrating). I’m figuring out how to make more work that lives in the physical world as opposed to just on a screen.
How has your art evolved over the years? In three words, how would you describe your style now?
Texture? Pulp? Feelings? I don’t know. I think my work has gotten a lot less flat overall. The stuff I’m making now is more dimensional and has more of a sense of light and space than what I was making a few years ago. More full scenes rather than stuff just floating in a void. My grasp on anatomy is better. Sometimes I feel like I’ve only really learned how to draw in the last two years. I mostly work digitally in Procreate now, so I’ve been leaning into what that allows me to do instead of trying to translate a traditional illustration setup one-to-one. Letting my process get a little more complicated instead of just “sketch, lineart, color.”
Of all the illustrations you’ve created, which is your favorite to date? Why?
Probably this image I made in 2021. I think it has a nice mix of style and substance, and I basically started making work differently after this piece. I’m very resistant to stepping outside of the totally arbitrary constraints I put on my process, so using more than two flat colors and a few new brushes felt like a lot of experimentation for me at the time. I learned a lot by making this, and I think you can see it in all of my current work.
Texture? Pulp? Feelings?
This past year, you won The Folio Society’s Book Illustration Award, and 2022’s competition asked entrants to illustrate a scene of their choice from Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Masque of the Red Death.” Is Poe a favorite horror writer of yours?
Poe is a favorite in that I remember my dad giving me “The Black Cat” to read when I was pretty young, and it scared me so, so bad. It kept me up at night, and I thought about it all the time. I’m pretty sensitive to stuff involving animals; I still think about it, and it creeps me out. So that was a part of my really early introduction to horror.
Who/what are some of your contemporary horror favorites?
I mostly read horror, and I have a lot of faves—it’s hard to pick! Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Manhunt was unforgettable. Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians. Kathe Koja’s The Cipher is one of my favorite books (I’m biased because I like weird books about punks). Those are all ones I recommend to people a lot.
(Editor’s note: Everyone should listen to Evangeline. Go read them. Right after you finish reading this interview.)
What’s the last thing you read or watched that really scared you?
Books don’t usually scare me as much as movies. The last one I saw that really scared me was The Medium. It’s hard for me to get into a lot of documentary-style horror, but this one took its time and got me invested. It’s not a perfect movie, but it definitely freaked me out. Skinamarink also got me good; I was holding my breath in the theater.
What are you afraid of? How does fear—yours, or just in general—play a role in what you create?
Mostly banal human stuff like ending up alone. I have really bad anxiety, so it’s like that push-pull of being afraid of the world and other people but also immensely desiring connection and acceptance. I think a lot of my personal work deals with feelings of isolation for that reason. I am also afraid of aliens and heights.
…it’s like that push-pull of being afraid of the world and other people but also immensely desiring connection and acceptance.
Illustration by Evangeline Gallagher.
Speaking of horror and fear, the book covers you’ve designed are rad—I love the one you made for It Was All a Dream: An Anthology of Bad Horror Tropes Done Right (Hungry Shadow Press). What’s your favorite “bad” horror trope?
Thank you! I am very lucky to get to make a lot of stuff for my favorite literary niche. Hungry Shadow was awesome to work with. My favorite horror trope is probably reading out of an ancient tome and accidentally awakening an evil force. Or something scary appearing in a mirror. I love that. Hits every time.
Can you talk about what these projects have been like to work on? What does this process look like for you?
They’ve honestly all been a ton of fun; I have great clients! I usually work from a brief from an author, art director, or publisher—which can be super specific or super loose. I’m really lucky in that many clients are happy for me to just do my thing, but I don’t mind lots of specificity in a brief. Sometimes I’ll get to read a manuscript or excerpt for inspiration, but a summary or general idea of the project is totally enough to go off of (I am nosy though, so I like to get a sneak peek). Then I’ll do a few sketches, and we’ll refine from there.
Sketches shared by Evangeline Gallagher, for the cover of Andrew Joseph White’s The Spirit Bares Its Teeth.
The editors also really love the editorial work you’ve done that centers environmental issues, healthcare system reform, U.S. prison conditions, etc.—the pieces I’ve seen of yours in ProPublica are, just, so striking and important. Is this work you want to continue doing? Are there any topics you want to focus on in the future?
Editorial is really my favorite work to do, and I would love to do more. There’s an aspect of translation that is really engaging for me—how to distill what is usually a pretty complex story into a single image that is accurate, sets the appropriate tone, and draws attention. And I really love to learn. I’m very actively interested in environmentalism, prison abolition, etc. I don’t have a particular focus, but I’m interested in working on more investigative journalism that feels important to me and more local Baltimore stories.
Illustration by Evangeline Gallagher for ProPublica.
“Criminalizing Childhood” by Evangeline Gallagher.
There’s an aspect of translation that is really engaging for me—how to distill what is usually a pretty complex story into a single image…
Illustration by Evangeline Gallagher for ProPublica.
Thinking about ~the future~, I noticed a tarot deck in your online shop. When was your last tarot reading? Do you have a favorite card—both in your deck and generally speaking?
My most recent reading was a few days ago! It absolutely eviscerated me as usual. The Moon showed up in all my readings for a long time, but it’s been replaced more recently by Justice. The card that I connect to personally is The Chariot, but I never pull it in readings. My favorite cards that I illustrated for my deck are probably The Hermit and the Two of Swords.
Tarot cards by Evangeline Gallagher.
What else do the cards hold for you? Any upcoming projects you’re excited about?
I have more book covers for more scary stories coming out in the future that I can’t wait to share! And keep an eye on www.demoniacgame.com, which is a card game I illustrated that is going to be on Kickstarter this year. You get to be a demon and possess people—very fun.
Mostly, I’m excited to continue working on interesting creative projects with other interesting creative folks. It’s a joy, for real.
Evangeline Gallagher’s (@evangelinegallagher) illustrations, print shop, and online store can be viewed and accessed through her website.
Interview conducted by Court Ludwick.