Creating her own world
Leah Rose Rice creates whimsical illustrations and art dolls.
Peculiar round faces with wide-set eyes are a staple in artist Leah Rose Rice’s work. Her art dolls and whimsical illustrations could fit seamlessly into a story with Frog and Toad or a stop-motion film by Wes Anderson. She has even created a few characters from the children’s novel The Wind and the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.
Rice finished her MA in Illustration from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2022. Originally from St. Petersburg, Florida, Rice now lives and works out of Baltimore, Maryland, running an Etsy shop(StarryEyedArtworks) and steadily growing her social media accounts.
Rice’s TikTok account features some process videos of her 3-D sculpting and packing videos of her art dolls. Most of her dolls have a plush body with long skinny arms and legs. The face, feet, and hands are hand sculpted and attached to the fabric body. A packing video of a rabbit clown named Pinto went viral on her account with 3.5 million views. (The video’s audio was a song called “Clouds” by Luke Faulkner who was previously featured here on Actuality.)
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Rice writes on her website: “I aim to encapsulate a whimsical and nature-inspired mood in my artwork, with heavy influences from vintage toys, designs, and patterns. I am most passionate about creating artwork of anthropomorphized animals and human emotions and connections. I hope to create artwork that is fantastical and a little bit strange, but also comforting and nostalgic.”
Follow Rice and her fantastical characters on Instagram and TikTok @leah.rose.rice and make sure to check out her Etsy shop StarryEyedArtworks when it opens back up again. If you want to create works like Rice, find your unique inspiration in the world around you and explore her Amazon storefront to see the materials she uses to bring her characters to life.