laura gulshani
Royal Gilbert

Meet the Canadian Painter Living Out Her Dream in Paris

Laura Gulshani makes a case for choosing passion over pragmatism

Laura Gulshani has two types of days. There are the mornings she fixes herself a cup of coffee in her small, sun-filled appartement, then sets up her oils and gets to work painting in her kitchen. Then, there are what she calls her “art explorer days,” when the entire agenda is dedicated to fuelling up on beauty.

“I’ll go to a new café I’ve written down and then I’ll take a long walk and maybe go to a museum. I love doing that stuff on my own because then I can really immerse myself in what I’m seeing, what’s inspiring me and keep it all in my visual bank to pull out later.”

Gulshani never imagined she’d one day be a professional artist, much less one living in Paris. Raised in Mississauga, Ont., the child of a Colombian mother and an Iranian father, she felt a responsibility to pursue a “real” career. “My goal was always to have some sort of stable job because I come from a family of immigrants who worked really hard and came from nothing,” Gulshani explains. “Their goal was to give me a better life so I could get a better life for myself, not become, like, a broke artist [laughs].”

laura gulshani
Photo: Royal Gilbert

Not that her family didn’t encourage her artistic leanings. Her mother, a librarian, is an avid crafter, while her father, a nuclear scientist, is creative in his own way, she says. As a child she and her brother would build cardboard castles in the backyard and draw and paint. “We would doodle on the walls, and my mom would let us. My parents never pushed me into any type of work. They just said, ‘Do what makes you happy.’”

For a long time, Gulshani thought that would be a job in magazines. “I grew up watching Jeanne Beker and other amazing fashion journalists like Hilary Alexander and Suzy Menkes, so that was something that really interested me,” she says. She studied fashion at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson) and interned at various publications including Elle Canada, while keeping up her drawing on the side. As it happened, it was a stint as an editorial intern for The Kit that wound up changing her trajectory.

“It was the best team—they were so supportive and taught me so much about the editorial world,” she recalls. “When they found out I did drawings, they gave me projects so that I could make enough money to buy a smartphone and get Instagram, because they were like, ‘You need Instagram for your work—that’s how you promote yourself!’ And I really didn’t want to, but I realized it was important, and they helped me do that.”

Though she was shy about it at first, Gulshani started sharing her art—whimsical fashion illustrations bursting with colour—on social media. She got a job as a copywriter for The Shopping Channel; after coming home, she’d paint all evening. She kept this up for about two years, amassing fans along the way. Then, Marie-Claire UK reached out with the opportunity of a lifetime: an assignment to cover fashion month in paintings.

She handed in her resignation and headed backstage at fashion weeks for a season: New York, London, Milan, Paris. She’d paint some stuff in real time at the shows, then do some more in her hotel room at night and send it to her editor.: “It was stressful, but it was an incredible experience.”

“My heart just didn’t glow with anything else.”

When she got back to Toronto, Gulshani made the decision to become a full-time artist. “My heart just didn’t glow with anything else,” she says. She was living with her mother and spent her days painting—“painting everything”—and fine-tuning her style: jaunty brush strokes that seemed to dance across the canvas, a buoyant palette of hibiscus pink, persimmon orange and deep sea blue—the colours of her parents’ homelands.

“Growing up, there were always artifacts in my house from both my mom’s and my dad’s side,” she remembers. “It’s very poetic on both sides and very colourful and decorative. Subconsciously, I think that really inspired me.”

laura gulshani
Photo: Royal Gilbert

While rooted in the personal, something about Gulshani’s art seemed to resonate with a lot of people. Little by little, her following grew until one day, it practically exploded. “A significant moment was when [French designer] Jacquemus reposted one of my paintings,” she remembers. From there, she landed her first international exhibition in Madrid, had her work published in British Vogue and designed prints for Escada’s 2019 resort collection.

That’s also around the time Gulshani decided to move to Paris. Work opportunities kept bringing her to the city, so she thought, “Why not try living there?” “There’s so much here that speaks to me and my soul as an artist,” she says. “Art has a different meaning in people’s lives here. It’s considered essential to a good lifestyle balance to enjoy art, to immerse yourself in art, to collect art.”

Gulshani has since collaborated with a bevy of French names including Le Bon Marché, Paul & Joe, Jonak and Soi Paris. Most recently, she was tasked with designing the packaging for Guerlain’s spring makeup collection, an ode to classic blue jeans. Wrapped in denim, the result is a highly collectible array of eyeshadows and lipsticks embroidered with cheery blooms and bumblebees—the latter an emblem of the storied beauty house.

laura gulshani guerlain
Guerlain Rouge G Floral Denim Refillable Lipstick Case in Blossom Jean, $48, sephora.ca Photo: Sephora

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Regardless of subject matter or medium—be it a canvas, clothes, pottery or a makeup palette—there is a common thread that runs through Gulshani’s work: joy. Pure makes-your-heart-smile kind of joy. “I paint things that really spark something inside me and make me want to recreate them, whether that’s a vase of flowers or something on the runway or someone’s face on the street that I just fell in love with. I am very much into politics and following international foreign affairs, but I’ve never wanted to mix the two. I guess it’s a way of escaping and coping with anxiety, because I’ve had anxiety all my life, and painting has been my therapy.”

It’s that light-heartedness that’s become her signature and built her success, but it’s also what’s caused her to feel like an impostor at times. “I always have this deep-seated insecurity that I’m not taken seriously because my stuff is not conceptual, it’s not intellectual,” she says. “I don’t have formal training. [My work] is just a collection of things that I love to paint and the way I would love to live if I had the opportunity to wear this or have a room like that. But if the right people find my work and it makes them happy, then that’s really fulfilling.”

At the end of the day, fulfillment is what it all comes down to for Gulshani. She may not have chosen the secure path she once strove for, but the risks of following her passion have more than paid off. “I realized I don’t need a lot to be happy, so I can kind of get away with not having all the things that my friends with full-time jobs have,” she says. “I never dreamed of having a big house or lots of money. I just wanted to be happy and comfortable and fill my life with beautiful things and colours.” In turn, that’s exactly what she’s filling the world with, one painting at a time.

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