The Quirkiest 'Meet Cutes' Of Pop Culture History, Illustrated

Valentine's Day is coming, and many Americans will get in the spirit by snuggling up with a sweetheart and watching one of the great love stories of our time: "The Jerk," or "Edward Scissorhands." Maybe even "Labyrinth" or "Her." 

Not the classic romances you had in mind?

"I’m a sucker for romantic stories coming from places you don’t expect," artist Nan Lawson told The Huffington Post in an email. Her new solo show at Gallery1988 in Los Angeles was, she explained, inspired by its proximity to Valentine's Day. "I immediately thought ... how fun it would be to do an entire series of couples," she said.

The show is titled "Meet Cute," after the term used to denote a fictional scene from film or television, in which the two parts of a fated romantic duo meet for the first time." Lawson's pop culture-inspired portraits, created digitally using a Wacom Cintiq tablet, arise out of her desire to tap into a shared excitement about pop obsessions like the meet cute and more.

"There is something so satisfying about creating portraits of characters that people will recognize," she told HuffPost. "Because when they do recognize them, their faces light up! They love these characters so much."

Though these couples, depicted in Lawson's distinctive manga-inflected, soft-hued style, will inspire cries of recognition from geeks, their poses aren't traditional romantic ones or scenes pulled from the source material. Instead, each pair floats back to back, their bodies slightly mingling transparently, like human Venn diagrams.

"I love the idea of two characters overlapping one another as if they are two parts to one whole, like there is a certain symbiosis to being part of a pair," explained Lawson. "It’s ... like they are facing the world together."

There's nothing more romantic than that.

Catch Lawson's full show at Gallery1988 (East) in Los Angeles from Jan. 29 through Feb. 13.

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