Kellas Campbell grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba and outside Chicago, Illinois. Her trusty Siamese cat, Charlie I, was by her side throughout. She lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with her rescue cat, Noir. After 14 years together, Charlie II, her muse and model — she is the cat who looks at you from almost all her drawings — died on October 22, 2019.

Campbell learned to draw from her mother, Helen, a commercial artist. When her mother was hospitalized in 2004, Campbell returned to drawing. She started with frogs and other creatures from National Geographic magazines in the ICU waiting room. Although Helen was unable to fully wake up from a coma, whenever Campbell had a drawing to show her, she opened her eyes and appraised it silently. Helen died in 2004.

A year later, Campbell adopted her cat muse Charlie II, and began drawing her. When Campbell moved to London, she took her drawings to a local frame store, as putting them on the wall made more sense than storing them in boxes. The store owner asked if he could try selling them, and so her career as an artist began. She sells prints and accepts commissions at her website.

Her work has featured in home decor magazines as well as in Singapore’s Tatler Magazine: in an interview with the Affordable Art Fair director, he selected ‘Time to Leave the Nest’ as one of his favourite purchases. Art schools regularly use Campbell’s drawings in the classroom. Along with artists such as Mark Ryden and the creator of Pusheen, Campbell’s work appeared in the 2019 coffee-table book, Cats Rock: Felines in Contemporary Art and Pop Culture by Elizabeth Daley.