Deadly Knitshade (a.k.a Lauren O’Farrell) is a colourful-haired comics creator, writer, crafty street artist and author from London, UK. She lives and works in Crystal Palace, where she is butler to a small, highluy judgemental black cat.
She has absolutely no formal art school training, and stumbled into her art career during a three-year battle with cancer, countering medical needles with her own needles, scissors, and pointy writing implements. She claims the radiotherapy gave her eerie arty superpowers.
Deadly Knitshade apologises in advance if any of her art tries to eat you.
Comics and other scribblings
Deadly loves comics. As a tiny urchin, she could be found happily buried in a pile of Beanos, Oinks, and Snoopy books.
Comics creation began late in her art career, when the 2020 lockdown life forced everyone indoors. She has self published mini comics, sneaked into anthologies. Her current work-in-progress, The Frozens, has been shortlisted for the First Graphic Novel Award 2026.
She also publishes the Very Tiny Comics Anthology, a collection of comics dispensed from a lovingly reconditioned giant vintage gumball machine. Each comic is 22mm wide (less than 1 inch).
Comic Fairs creator
Knitshade is a proud co-creator and organiser of inQ!, London’s Queer Comic Fair hatched in 2024, and also helps run South London’s, Yo Kid’s Comic Fair.
She firmly believes that anyone can make a good comic, and that one day comics will save the world, quite unexpectedly, on a soggy Thursday afternoon. She personally can’t wait.
Street Art stories
Knitshade’s weird, and often woolly, tactile art ranges from a giant knitted squid, to button-based mosaics, to fuzzy-felt monster murals.
Alongside her street art pieces, she has also created commissions for big brands such as London’s Natural History and Science museums, Nintendo, John Lewis, and Saatchi and Saatchi, as well as several celebrity clients.
Knitshade has worked with a whole lot of charities including Save the Children, the NSPCC, Cancer Research, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, and Comic Relief.
She was also part of the team that created Chewbacca’s costume for Star Wars: The Force Awakens and will never get over how cool that is. Never ever.
*insert Wookiee noise here*
Private Commissions
Knitshade has worked on private commissions for the likes of Richard Curtis and Emma Freud, Emma Thompson, and Emma Kennedy. She does work for people who aren’t called Emma too. This is just a weird coincidence, which possibly has a deeper meaning no one will fathom for 10000 years.
When asked for an endorsement, British screenwriter, producer and film director Richard Curtis said of Knitshade’s work “I like Deadly Knitshade’s art more than I like my own children.”
Please be assured, he likes his own children very much indeed.
Deadly on the Tellybox
The 2021 BBC documentary Craftivism: Making a Difference featured Knitshade’s street art. It saw her sneaking about Crystal Palace Park with Jenny Eclair, installing fuzzy felt monsters while giggling.
Her art is playful and unexpectedly lovable in her bid to help change the world with a grin rather than a grimace.
Watch a little video about Knitshade’s street art inspriation
Knitshade likes to write about herself in the third person. It pleases the horrifying beast that is her imposter syndrome.