Everyone looks forward to The New Yorker's Fiction issue, and this year we are particularly struck by the absolutely AH-mazing cover illustration. Here's why: It was created by Loveis Wise — a Philadelphia-based WOC illustrator who not only has a unique name but also created an absolutely drool-worthy work of art. In fact, we are so completely obsessed that we immediately wanted to find out everything we could about the artist. Here’s what you need to know about Loveis Wise:

A bit on Loveis Wise:

Loveis Wise (seriously cannot get enough of that name), was named after her great-grandmother Loveis Edwards who then married to someone with the last name Wise. She grew up in Washington, D.C., and graduated from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she studied illustration, along with painting and woodcuts. Her father was a photographer and would take her to galleries such as the Hirshhorn and the National Portrait Gallery.

"I remember going to the Portrait Gallery and seeing a piece, 'SOB, SOB,' by Kerry James Marshall. That’s when I fell in love with art. It was, like, 'This is what I need to do.' I was maybe eight," she told The New Yorker.

A bit on her work:

Many of her earlier pieces were inspired by the fact that her grandmother did hair. Her pieces also involve a lot of nature due to her grandmother’s gardening.

"It brought her a lot of peace. She wanted to share that with us. She had a little garden in her back yard, and we’d help her on weekends. It was a way for us to bond, and also a way for us to connect with our environment, the community we grew up in. I wanted to draw from that nostalgia a little," said Wise.

While in school, she dabbled in everything from oil paintings to graphite and woodcuts. She eventually found a consistency of lines in her work and started developing her shape. While she continues to work on finding how to personalize her voice, she enjoys exploring human interactions and relationships and being inclusive in her art by featuring all different kinds of people.

Where to find and purchase her work:

While The New Yorker cover was her debut for the magazine, it isn’t her first time working with some amazing publications. Some of the publications on her outstanding resume are Refinery29, BuzzFeed News, Philadelphia Printworks , Tampa Bay Times, Eileen Fisher, The Poetry Foundation and Cartoon Network. Wise also has merch that can be found here, prints can be found on her Etsy shop and you can follow her Instagram for a much prettier and inspiring feed.

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Florynce kennedy