Lauren Halkon is both an artist and a writer. She was born in the British county of East Yorkshire in 1973 and, after several dalliances with life in the USA, lives there still. From early childhood she enjoyed art and writing and always dreamed of one day owning a camera of her own and capturing the world she saw all around her. She wrote the plot for her first fantasy novel at the age of 15 and went on to complete it before the age of 18. It was painstakingly typed out on a battered old typewriter and large amounts of liquid paper were used in those pre-computer days! At the age of 23 her dream of owning a camera was realised and she began to photograph the endlessly fascinating world and the people it contains. Two years later she bought her first computer and discovered the magic that Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro were capable of. She taught herself how to use these tools, just as she taught herself how to write, and began to create the images she had always desired to create but had never been able to achieve with the medium of photography alone. From these humble beginnings arose the phoenix of five more novels, numerous short stories, poems and the artwork you see here on this site.

Lauren's writing career began in 1998 with her first published short story and since then she has gone on to publish over 40 stories and poems in the professional and independent press. Her visionary dark fantasy novel, Night Seekers, was published by US publisher Cosmos Books in 2002 and her short story collection, Chrysalis, was published by Prime Books in 2005. Both books have won critical acclaim as unique and emotional pieces of writing and you can read reviews and excerpts from both books on this site.

Lauren's art has appeared on the covers of books and CDs and has been exhibited both locally and nationally. It has sold to art lovers in the UK, Europe and America and continues to gain positive comments wherever it is shown from both young and old alike.

Lauren sees Lookinglass Works as a symbol for many things: the thoughts, feelings, emotions and never-ending quest for knowledge and experience that make up a human life. She is a student of many things: art, science, spirituality, psychology, history, mythology, shamanism, paganism and the natural world and her images and writing are her attempts to show others the things she sees and learns. She hopes that in trying to better understand herself and her place in the world she can help others do likewise.

Lauren creates all her images using Adobe Photoshop and JASC Paint Shop Pro. Her work could best be described as digital photographic montage and her subject matter is almost exclusively that of the human face and body. The face and body are our first and foremost means of communication, giving away secrets that our words often hide, and thus they seem to Lauren the perfect subjects to convey her thoughts and feelings. With her writing she attempts to pursue the same ideals, seeking to show truth, using words to uncover rather than veil, to open up doorways to otherworlds, to uncover the pain and beauty of the human heart, soul and mind and lay them bare for all to see.

Her inspirations come from all facets of life: the books she reads, the music she listens to, the natural world, dreams, art and films. To name specific names she would lay much of the blame for her artistic tendencies at the feet of Susan Seddon Boulet, Tim Burton, Mervyn Peake and Clive Barker. Her work is often free-form in nature; she rarely has any idea how each story or image will come together but simply begins and lets intuition be her guide.