Josie Tucker’s drawings are a communion of Nobrow, Futurama and the Hubble Telescope. Her overactive imagination has been producing some pretty freaky-beautiful things, some of which have already achieved permanence as tattoos over her body.

Dazed Digital: What's your obsession with space about?
Josie Tucker: Space is one of my favourite subjects for so many reasons. Firstly because of the vast amount of meaning it has within the population of the world. For centuries it’s been a subject of speculation, just this… thing that sort of hangs above our head, which would either be the cause of fear or respect, or wonder. When I was studying old theories about the moon in particular, the craziest stuff was coming up, such as hundreds of years ago people thought that rain happened because there were two little boy twins on the moon who used to take it in turns to pour water into the sky. And it’s been more recently speculated that the moon can actually cause and affect mental illness in humans, because the moon has a strong gravitational pull on the earth’s water, including the vast amount of water in the brain. 

DD: Where do you’re ideas come from?
Josie Tucker: The artwork on my Dad's vinyl collection inspired me massively as a child. But a lot of my work actually just comes from my dreams; every now and then I have a really vivid dream, which will stick with me for the day. I’m probably the only one that can make any sense of them though!

DD: Which artists inspire you?
Josie Tucker: I have to say I love a lot of artists’ work but I have a few that I look to for constant inspiration, the first being Mike Lythgoe, whose work was suggested to me by someone after they saw one of my abstract photo collages. I looked into his work and actually discovered that a poster in my room was one of his! He’s been a firm favourite ever since. For inspiration with the ideological side of things I look at Raymond Pettibon. His is scrappy but bold line work with a lot of meaning. He just draws these amazing, hand- written one-liners that sit really significantly with his drawings.

DD: Do you have any upcoming projects?
Josie Tucker: Since the success of Brainchild Festival, which I created the logo for as well as being involved in branding the event, I have had a lot of positive attention. So, I am definitely going to be looking at more typographic and logo work. I was a bit worried that my style would be a bit D.I.Y. but a lot of people are looking for that at the moment and I am a big fan of hand drawn type!