From the Curator:
Dear Viewer,
Creatures, Beasts, Myths is finally here! To us, this show has arrived just in time to help us escape to a world of living things which might inspire, confuse, bewilder, or even unnerve. That said, there is not one human figure in this entire collection of works, yet it is full of human fingerprints. Clearly, the creatures, beasts, and myths we believe in are significant to us in precisely the moments we need them to be most.
Creatures, Beasts, Myths is a timely exhibition. Now is the time to evaluate if you’ve disguised or projected your pain, panic, or anguish in any way lately. Now is the time to evaluate if you’ve misjudged someone or something recently. It’s the time to ask yourself if there are any creatures, beasts, etc. living where they shouldn’t be, for example maybe a certain house, maybe a white house perhaps, who knows! Now’s the time to simply look around and see the creatures, beasts, and myths around you as they really are, shadows of ourselves, products of our perception.
Enjoy the adventure below you where 45 artists from 15 different countries have provided fantastical Creatures, Beasts, Myths and more, both real and imagined, all to turn your mind and attention towards worlds you’ve likely never encountered before! Be sure to explore the work of each artist further and keep supporting emerging art!
Enjoy the exhibition!
With gratitude for your support,
– S
Liying Zhang
Rockford, IL
Shelter Series
Ceramics, Gold Leaf
Artist Statement: Shelter is the most recent series of work that I have been working on. All the sculptures were made of high temperature ceramic clay. I combined elements of plants, animals, human body parts, creatures and myths into my works, and made them into various surreal forms. Every time that I conceive of the form of my sculptures, I always like to imagine them as my dream hidden place where it is safe and secret. I enjoy indulging in childlike fantasies, where the world is innocent, joyful, and sometimes magical. However, the world where adults live is harsh and sad because they have been expelled from the “protected garden”. This may be a price for us to knowledge the truth and essence of the world. Art is perceptual, and I use it to build the “hidden place” of the human mind. Just like fairy tales to children and legend stories to adults, we all can live there to rest, at least temporarily avoiding the siege of experiences and doubts.
Claire Weaver-Zeman
Swampscott, MA
1.Fox Girl 2. Rebuilding 3. Fractured Demon 4. Mountain Ladies
1. 30×28″ 2. 30×40″ 3. 30×40″ 4. 16×20″
I am interested in depicting the uncomfortable, strange feelings of transitional states. Fractured and flattened space, reoccurring patterns and figures, and vivid colors evoke the awkwardness and anxiety that exist in these spaces. Lines cut from mylar stencils allow me to emphasize shape and create moving, layered, images that operate in an illogical, constantly fluctuating landscape. Sometimes strange, anxious creatures populate the periphery of these spaces, sometimes figures are caught mid-transformation, as they turn into animals or hybridized beasts.
Nina Molloy
Bangkok & New York
Foot Fungus
Oil on canvas. 48 x 48 inch. 2020.
My practice attends to our human compulsion for myths and fantasies, and it’s reverberations in everyday life. I am fascinated by the idea of seeing as a source of knowledge and contact with the world, and it’s centrality in our production of fantasies of happiness, control, and transcendence. Immersed within the history of painting, I am seeking to expand the boundaries of our collective imagination. My paintings engage fantasy as a tool to envision different realities; worlds built not around our notion of what is “realistic,” but rather, by what can be dreamt. This curiosity stems partly from my bicultural upbringing and the constant shifts in my physical and internal boundaries. Born and raised in Bangkok, I currently live in New York where I am a Studio Art major at New York University.
Jill Arwen Posadas
Philippines
My Joe’s Walken
Acrylic on canvas / 36 x 36 inches
I paint “monsters”, which is what I call anyone who isn’t entirely human or belonging to a naturally occurring species. Most of my monsters are what you get when you add animal, plant or non-organic characteristics to a humanoid base. To me, these monsters are intelligent, and have feelings and distinct personalities. Because of this, I believe that each of the monsters I create has a story to tell based on who he is, what he is, and where he comes from. My monster images continue to evolve from interpretations of the monsters I grew up with in fairy tales and mythology to explorations of monsters in specific habitats. In depicting my monsters, I use watercolour, acrylic, oil and acrylic pastel, and oil because of how these materials lend themselves to fine detail and expressive texture. By taking my viewers to worlds where monsters are readily found, I hope to encourage them to think about how it might be possible for them to get along with people who look different from most everybody else.
Jon Duff
Brooklyn, NY
Insights on Extinction From an Ancient Time Traveler
Acrylic on canvas, 36×36
My work belongs in a combined genre of science fiction and comedy. In the tradition of science fiction and cosmic horror, I am speculating possibilities for our species and the nature of reality, but also exposing the limits of our perception and understanding while offering an uncommon glimpse into the personal and psychological strains beneath the morass of the modern day to day. The best cosmic horror often attempts to describe things we can barely imagine and often resembles a jumbled soup of words or images that don’t always comply with our understanding. I do the same with unexpected and surreal forms intertwined the recognizable objects in my work. I poke fun at the human experience through sculpture, painting and digital prints which express a disorderliness that is both humorous and apocalyptic. I am using the abilities I have as a crazy ape in a disordered world to act out and make discoveries.
Hannah Witner
USA
Rebel
oil, acrylic, charcoal on unprimed canvas
Hannah Witner’s work combines humanoids with an expansive array of visual material with immense play of colors, beginning in consciousness and transience. Her work combines touches of reality with meta-fiction and comedy and reflects our disorder, dissociation, detachment, individualism, and weird minutia of the human condition. The new way that we must move through the world in a post-modern society is explored by the constant state of movement and deformity that the body takes, on it’s own and in conjunction with others. She pokes at the flawed and unexplainable through painting and illustration, expressing a disorderliness that is both humorous and amorphic. Witner hopes her new bodies of work read as an exploration into the boundaries that comics and cartoons can push into traditional and non-traditional painting techniques and experimental forms. She has been working with the juxtaposition between the intense high frequency of chaos balanced with low frequency moments of rumination. Primordial and apocalyptic; sweeping and specific; humorous and biological: all exploring the chaos and order of moments in between what we can actually see.
Atita Taware
India
Moth Trap (Watercolor Sketches)
Watercolour, 5 in x 7 in, 2020
Being a farmer’s daughter I always enjoy observing nature. I like to observe interactions between living organisms (flora, fauna). They depend on each other for living. There is a delicate bond between them and this amazes me. I feel that living forms communicate to each other in a very different magical way than we do. My works centre primarily on topics of Biodiversity degradation, awareness of endemic and endangered species, land conversions. I continue to refine my technique and find new ways to capture the essence of life and existence of self. Having witnessed moths getting attracted towards artificial light mystified and impelled me for the quest. I collected data of moths, visited my place over 6 months, did experiments, discussed with entomologists, tried to get information, but failed to understand the exact reason for this attraction which leads to mortality. Many theories have been put forward but none of them could scientifically confirm the reason for this fatal attraction. This is the biggest mystery of these small creatures.
Emily Herberich
CT, USA
1.X Symbol 2. Evolution of Medusa (Jacob’s Ladder II) 3. Great Diversity of Being 4. She-monster 5. Jacob’s Ladder
1.oil on canvas, 32×22 2. oil on board, 48X24 3. oil on canvas, 2017, 18X24 4.oil on canvas, 2018, 18X18 5.oil on canvas, 2019, 40X30
Monsters, beasts, mythical and mystical creatures have always played a role in my thinking about the visual arts. My work is a constant engagement with my imagination and an attempt to visually articulate experiences that are difficult to speak of directly. Other-worldly creatures, such as Medusa, for example, become a way to explore the hideous, the alluring, the grotesque, and the frightening in human experience. My painting, “The Evolution of Medusa (Jacob’s ladder II)” explores a possible history of how such a creature came to be in a socio-evolutionary sense, and how the hideous is not too far disconnected from the cute or everyday. Beyond being simply an externalization of misogyny, the “Medusa” myth seems to convey a fascination and a repulsion by that which is not-quite-human, and a collective fear-memory of the processes of evolution. Artists such as Leonora Carrington and Hilma af Klint have influenced my thinking about the fantastic and the surreal.
Brass Rabbit
Trenton, NJ, USA
Tar
Photography and digital manipulation 16×24 printed on canvas
Combining the mediums of photography, digital manipulation, mixed media and sculpture, my work bends between playful and gruesome, discussing American society and the intricacies of social stigmas. I create to answer my own questions on the social and political subconscious attitudes of my fellow Americans, attempting to find common ground beneath the many layers that separate my experience from my country and my people.
Maria João Justo
Lisboa
Morbuisfly
Mix Media 30 cm x 30 cm
It evokes the concept of vanitas, with a contemporary vision of objects and myths, like an adaption of our cultural life. The pursuit the representation of existence.
Ketzia Schoneberg
Portland, OR, USA
1.Corvid in the Wind 2. Anubis Pink 3. Bestat in the Ferns 4. Orange Fox I
1.mixed media on paper, 8″ x 8″ 2. mixed media on paper, 16″ x 20″ 3. mixed media on paper, 8″ x 8″ 4. mixed media on paper, 16″ x 20″
In my mixed-media paintings from the Wild series of works, I explore the varied beauty, emotional intensity and awkward angles of the Wild and sometimes Mythical Animals that exist in our inner and outer lives. These paintings are often inspired by imagery of animal gods from our ancient cultures; the title and aspect of these characters are a way of showing respect and kinship with the wild creatures that live in our homes, forests, dreams and who inhabit the occasional vision. Vivid color, loose mark making and abstract elements are hallmarks of my figurative expressionist style.
Victoria Gaitán
Bogota, Colombia
Dracula’s Brides
Oil on canvas pad, 11.8 in x 16.5 in
These two pieces came from the concept of monstrous women, their representation in media and the imagery of those women and the act of consuming flesh, coming from a phrase that says that there’s nothing scarier than a hungry woman allowing herself to eat, showing that she has desires that benefit her and only her, something that could be viewed selfish, so from that point of view I wanted to put a spotlight on that imagery, especially the aftermath, the disturbing wild eyes, the stained face of that which she just ate and the tired jaw from the steady act of eating.
Shayna J Feinstein
Marlton, NJ, USA
1.The Golden Fleece 2. Baba Yaga’s House 3. The Night Mare 4. Jonah and the Whale
1.Acrylic on Watercolor Paper, 20×16 2.Acrylic on watercolor paper, 11×14 3. Acrylic on watercolor paper, 8×10 4. Acrylic on watercolor paper, 11×14
My work aims to re-tell stories from mythology, theology, and classic literature through a modern aesthetic. The tales I chose focus around themes of environmentalism and man’s powerlessness to the forces of nature, often resulting in their own destruction.
Emi Avora
Singapore
1.Warrior with Vases 2. Perseus and the Sea Monster 3.Warriors at Breakfast
1.acrylic on canvas, 90x70cm, 2019 2.acrylic on burlap, 65x50cm, 2020 3. acrylic on paper, 59x42cm, 2020
The images submitted are part of a larger body of work that I produced after relocating to Asia. Drawing from my Greek ancestry, everyday scenes like breakfast still lives and tropical plants commonly found in my place of residence come together with legends and ancient Greek myths. Cycladic goddesses appear in enchanted forests and characters from the ancient world come out of their vases and occupy the compositions.
Observing my surroundings but also drawing inspiration from fictional mythologies, I try to find my place in time blending fiction and reality, populating the mundane by imaginary symbols of strength and at the same time humorously making these symbols part of my everyday.
Deborah Eve Alastra
Portland, Oregon
New Growth
40×30″
I’ve never had much to say about my work. I have been described as ‘Village Naive’, ‘Impressionistic’, ‘Outsider’, ‘Folk’. My surroundings have the upmost somewhat obsessive importance. While walking, driving, gardening, traveling I am constantly searching for the beauty that can be found, often in the most mundane of subject matter. Having lived and traveled in Mexico as a child and my teenage years in small towns outside of London, my love of antiquated villages and the life I fantasize within slants my perspective; forever searching for that ’safe utopian beautiful cozy spot in the universe’. Now all the more with rapidity of climate change, political upheaval, the unearthing of racial injustice and the growing fight against, Covid19 and sheltering in place, I continue to paint for emotional survival if nothing else. Perhaps creating a ’safe’ place where I might hide but also and most hopefully, providing some nourishment and emotional shelter for the viewer.
Terry Levin
Cape Town, South Africa
Pagan Adam and Eve
500×600 acrylic on canvas
This painting, inspired by millennia of artistic depictions of Adam and Eve, invites us to ‘re-believe’ in our profound human inheritance of the enduring myth of earth’s first people in Paradise, completely in tune with the animistic and totemic spirits that precede them and are all around them – a crane, rabbit, deer, lion, horse and wild boar emerge from the garden, in their power and bliss, grateful for the earth’s gifts of apples, grapes, radishes, beets and the gifts of the earth they will inherit.
Evgenia Baburina
Russia
Chatting
60 x 42
Didn’t each of us feel kind of weird some days during the pandemic isolation? Well, I did :). So, as well as it can be chatting to some strange looking friend, it might also be chatting to yourself.
Grayson Gigante
Richmond, VA, USA
Mountain Lion
Digital
I like making lines. Most of my sketchbooks are filled with odd abstract line doodles that I make in a kind of meditative state. I wanted to channel that organic creation into a more solid subject. I’ve been inspired for a long time by ancient masks, particularly Cambodian masks, so I wanted to draw a creature just as expressive. The lion seemed to just flow out with my line creation, and I set it as a giant on top of a mountain, making something we know as huge seem small.
Catherine Phyllis
Adelaide, Australia
1.St.George.exe 2. Lady Godive.exe 3. Diana.exe 4. Angel with a Lance.exe
1.Acrylic and oil on canvas, 101.6 x 76.2 2.Oil on canvas, 101.6 x 76.2 cm, 2018 3. Acrylic and oil on canvas. 101.6 x 76.2 cm 4. Oil on canvas, 101.6 x 76.2 cm
Hi, My name is Catherine Phyllis. I graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts at The Adelaide College of the Arts in 2018. With a major in painting and a strong interest in digital art, I combine the two in order to create visually dynamic pieces. my work, which uses Pop Art and the Vaporwave movement as inspiration, sees glitches, neon and classical sculptures combine in an explosion of colour and eye-catching imagery. My work also aims to address the idea of recontextualising classical work in a contemporary style while also creating an optical illusion wherein three-dimensional objects and digital elements appear on a 2D, painted plane.
Amelia White
Boston, MA, USA
Oracle
11″ x 14″ graphite and gouache on bristol paper
Certain breeds of animals have always come across to me as other-worldly deities, mostly because of their appearance. I imagine that when you die, you are greeted by the Oracle Sphinx who discusses and goes over some aspects of your life with you as you’re in limbo. The Oracle Sphinx is neither good nor bad, it is just there. It doesn’t decide whether you go to heaven or hell, it is just there with you briefly before everything goes black forever. It does not make judgments on your life decisions, its just there to give you one last glimpse of the life you lived before you lose it all forever. These narratives and animals are what inspires me to make work such as this.
Sarah Landreau
Dallas, TX, USA
1.Flying Rodent 2. Harefish
Ink on paper, 9×9 inches
Convention, and the possible reactions to it, are the usual starting points of my artistic ideas. I’m interested in why things are the way they are, how they got to be that way, and whether there might be other options, for better or worse. I find myself fascinated by the contrarian, the freethinker, the misfit. Using traditional media, and exploring my own emotional world and life experiences, I attempt to visibly work through philosophies, culture and taboos. I hope to invite viewers to do the same work in their own minds.
With these drawings of hybrid, cryptid creatures, I am attempting to reconnect to a playful side of creativity. I love to think about the dual nature of everything and the possibilities in mythology, especially my own made-up mythologies, for experimenting with that duality. Fantastical creations, such as animals that are half one thing and half another, can inspire such a variety of reactions. It fascinates and inspires me that anyone viewing such a creature will have their own interpretation, through their own lens, of the possible meanings.
Greg Brown
Southbury, CT, USA
1.Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe 2. Big Baby Wockys
1.36 x 48 in. 2020. Acrylic, tile adhesive, colored tissue paper, and graphite on canvas with fake fur edges 2.48 x 60 in. 2020. Acrylic, tile adhesive, colored tissue paper, and graphite on canvas with fake fur edges.
Working through the past long months of pandemic isolation but with creative resilience, I have turned inward to draw upon my childlike nature to express hope and joy. The creatures in my paintings are deliberately drawn very clumsily as the narrative implied is about the painting process itself — trying to find form and expression about my own personality and determination to be happy. Like Lewis Carroll combines nonsense words in his Jabberwocky poem, I do visually with my creatures – hybrids of my imagination. For the viewer my work is meant to be easily accessible — sensually more than analytically. I aim at cross-stimulating the senses of vision and touch with animated composition, circus colors, and textural variety. “Majestic goofiness!” — as a fellow artist describes my work.
Leslie Condon
Boston, MA, USA
1.Phi Kasu Goes for a Swim 2. A Lust for Oil
1.2020, Graphite on Mylar Film, 17 x 22 2.2020, Graphite on Mylar Film 17 x 22
The Laotian folklore of Phi Kasu tells the story of a nocturnal female spirit, imagined in different versions as the archetypical beautiful maiden or old crone. According to legend, the hovering spirit, comprised of only a head and entrails, roams the countryside after dark feeding on the living beings she comes upon to satiate her gluttony. Like many tales of female morality told through the lens of horror, Phi Kasu is speculated to be a wayward woman cursed by her choices in life. By recontextualizing Phi Kasu as a consumer of Western vices, she is no longer simply a horrific and tragic figure but also a kind of wounded healer. She gains strength through benevolent and violent means, seeking not redemption from the human species and, instead, offering salvation.
Phi Kasu Goes For a Swim – Like a sea serpent, Phi Kasu winds closer to a bed of trash resting somewhere over the deep waters of the Pacific Ocean. Will she consume our disposables like flesh or allow us to bear the consequences of our misdeeds and inaction?
A Lust for Oil– Phi Kasu uses her reed straw to draw out the crude oil from the passing river but still prefers the taste of blood. Thankfully, there is an endless supply oozing down the Kalamazoo River. Even if that disappears, another will come by pipeline or by tanker.
Alexandra Wirkijowski
Pennsylvania, USA
Tyto Alba
Intaglio Print, 6.5″x8″
I’ve always believed the bird’s wings are not only the most advanced, fascinating, and gorgeous part of the animal but out of all biological creation. One pair of wings isn’t enough to capture the multiple forms they take in flight, therefore I’ve made up this cryptid with multiple wings, resembling Seraphim from Christian mythology, to capture the intricacy and beauty in bird wings while creating an otherworldly but familiar creature.
Halah Khan
Pakistan
Self Portrait as Medusa
Oil on Sheet, 14 x 11 inches
I am a woman; I am a monster. I was born a sinner, my skin layered with wickedness, my body made to birth chaos. If I speak up, I am a mad woman, If I fight, I am crazy, there is no pure way for me to win. So I chose to nurse my demons with love, I feed my serpents with my own flesh and blood and I am content, I am content in being the monster that the world sees me as and I am ready to fight, I am ready to scream, I am ready to spit my venom.
Phoebe Burns
Huntsville, AL, USA
The Corruption
Photography, 9″x13″ inches
“The Corruption” explores the good and the evil that resides in each human. A human is capable of humane and inhumane actions. I explore that idea by representing a human horribly disfigured by the creature that lives and breathes inside all of us. The “good human” is illuminated by the light, but yet she is distressed by the consciousness of the “bad human”, who’s facial anatomy is twisted and shrouded in darkness. The “bad human” is also very much aware of the “good human”. They are both aware of the other. This awareness is what creates choice. Humans have a choice to be humane or inhumane. This blend of humanity shows how thin the line is from being human and beast. Which one do you choose to be?
Reniel Del Rosario
Vallejo, CA, USA
The Cardinals
Oil pastel on canvas, 30″W x 40″H
While my work focuses on real-life objects, my work three years ago dove into the realm of monsters and mythology. The Cardinals is from a series of work inspired by Spanish conquest. It started off by thinking about urban legends in the Philippines as stories under the guise of monsters for the violence against the native peoples during the 333-year colonization—the rapists, murderers, and victims transformed into figures such as a humanoid horse, supersized apes, and abandoned children. This imagery was then modified to reflect the stylizations, compositions, and figures from Spanish artists such as Diego Velasquez, Francisco Goya, and Pablo Picasso. The act of stealing these things from them was the same act of theft that the colonizing Spaniards acted upon the native land.
Danny Javier Sanchez
Colombia
Xolo
White pencil on black paper / digital collage
Dogs have been with humans for ages and thus became part of our myths, even reaching the level of Gods. In this manner, Xolo shows a crossed reference between 2 separated cultures, Mexicas and Greeks and how dogs were and still are an important part of their beliefs. On one side the mexican Xoloitzcuintle breed (the link with the underworld) and on the other, the Canis major constellation and Siriurs, Orion’s loyal companion. Dogs are living mythological beasts and this is why it relates to the proposed theme.
Keyi Liu
New York, USA
Insect God
Digital,2850x3600px
The aim of this illustration is to use the weird creature to discuss the meaning of life, society, and people themselves. In this painting, the people who are worn out by the immutable life are illustrated as half-human-half-insect monsters to present the metamorphosed people who are incompatible in society and cannot find a spiritual outlet. These people cannot accurately orient themselves because they have lost their passion for life, as well as the ability to enjoy life. The purpose of life for them is no longer to live, but to survive. In this painting, the half-human-half-insect monster is staring at a weird flower in front of him. There is a clown mask in the middle of the flower. This is what they crave for and the only thing they need. The overwhelmed “monsters” can only use masks to disguise themselves and live by pleasing others like a clown. The overall atmosphere of the picture is absurd and weird so as to present the metamorphosed living conditions of the people oppressed by meaningless lives.
Kate Tatsumi
California, USA
The Serpent & the Rib
video installation
My practice in interactive sculpture, video and installation questions and explores feminine stereotypes by utilizing feminist language and irony. By challenging the culturally normative sexualized female body, the work lies between essentialist and constructivist feminism. Using pop culture references and forms of breasts and vaginas, my work critiques the social constructs of gender and femininity. Commercialization and fetishization of the young female body in advertising and the feminine product produced and distributed through the media are important by-products in my work. White feminism and the prominence and problematics of the white female world star in western culture are themes I am exploring. My overall practice critiques the socialized associations with the feminine, explores gender roles and encourages feminist dialogues.
Lelia Woods
Oakland, CA, USA
Baku: Eater of Dreams
Digital, 14*4 inch
This piece is a depiction of one of my favorite mythical creatures, the Baku. Baku are creatures from Japanese folklore said to eat the dreams and nightmares of children. I used elements of theatre design in the drawing to create a storybook atmosphere for this beast to roam in.
Jonathan Kusnerek
South Bend, IN
Butterflies In My Stomach
Screen print and watercolor on paper, nerves, excitement, thinking of him 9″ x 14″
My work wanders between different constructs of nature as inherently good, inherently evil, and all the delicious messy gray areas in between. This manifests in references to folklore and various codes iconography. I am particularly focused on the enchanted forest as a queer space outside of the confining structures of society where the strange, secret, and magical occur. ‘Butterflies In My Stomach’ is the idea that complex emotions can often be difficult to describe and express. The way excitement and terror can feel similar.
Bonnie Griffin
Los Angeles, CA, USA
Remember Bolivar: The Life and Death of an American Elephant
5 x 5 ft advertisement banner to be worn by an elephant.
Bolivar the Elephant (~1861-1908) is an almost forgotten celebrity from America’s Gilded Age. Taken from Sri Lanka as a baby, he was made famous as ‘the largest living land animal in the world’ while on tour with Forepaugh’s Circus 1881-1888. Bolivar was used as a walking billboard during the circus parades, wearing hand-painted banners that advertised the show. He was a physical spectacle, but with no voice of his own, his personality, both wild and tame, was manipulated by his owners to mirror the zeitgeist of the time. Bolivar was used to explore ideas of exceptionalism, commercialism, assimilation, morality and folk-law throughout the 1800s. In this way Bolivar is both a real and imagined animal; a chimera used as a lens for focusing the foundational principles of ‘Americaness’ after the Civil War. These ideas are still being explored today as America faces another cultural reckoning. After deep research into his life, I created 6 new elephant advertisement banners for Bolivar exploring his ‘Americaness’ and imploring the viewer to ‘Remember Bolivar’.
Milene Tafra
Brasil, Rio Grande do Sul State, Porto Alegre city
Mãe-d’água (Water’s-mother)
watercolor and acrylic size A3 paper
In southern Brazil, the most jellyfish are often called “water’s mother”. It’s a powerful name to understand the encounter painted. What would it be if the human world met the non-human kind without prevailing over this? Is the human being concept compatible with humanity’s colonizing behavior against the more-than-human? Otherwise, who and what is a beast? I’d like all creatures could be free and considered human bein or that what is, nowadays, called human, must understand itself as Nature.
Mark Gray
London, UK
Eyes Shut Imagination Drawing
Ink on paper. 420x297mm
Eyes closed drawing. Initially created as a self challenge to explore how the brain actually interacts with pen on paper when we relax and just feel the drawing come to life channeling in this instance some of those creepy things that lurk in the depths of my mind!
Morgan Eamon
Richmond, IN, USA
Crypto-curiosity
Ceramic and mixed media 11.5″x10″x8″
Crypto-curiosity came from a playful interest in a macabre mixture of human and animal characteristics. More specifically, the “animal” referenced in the work is the mythological Jackalope, a type of North American cryptid appearing as a jackrabbit with deer or antelope horns protruding from its head. Combined with the already mythological element, the inorganic colors in the body along with the glistening, all-black eyes call on an almost alien association. The human posture and clothing were attempts to tame the beast while simultaneously tinkering with contrasting forms, textures, and colors.
Helen Dryden
Leeds, UK
GOOD LORD
Acrylic on canvas 50.5 x 40.4cm
Located in Leeds, UK, I create surreal and colourfully psychedelic figurative/abstract paintings. There are elements of surreal humour and a kitsch sensibility in my work, with references to family life, pop culture, and human/animal strangeness.
‘GOOD LORD’ features a hyena-like creature juxtaposed with painted text on a collaged panel, creating an ambiguous mood of humour/horror.
Rose Silberman-Gorn
Ridgewood, Queens
1.Baby Sun 2. Untitled
1.acrylic paint and marker on paper, 10″x10″ 2.acrylic paint and marker on paper, 23″x19″
I make surreal, bizarre paintings, using acrylic paint and markers on paper to depict cartoonish imagery in bright colors. In my work, I depict imaginary creatures, distorted faces, and childish motifs like dolls and clowns, often appearing cute but unsettling. I’m drawn to this imagery due to complex trauma experienced as a child which still impacts me. My artwork is a way of simultaneously processing my trauma, escaping from it, and reimagining the childhood that I didn’t have. The anxiety, withdrawal, grief, and repression that come from trauma are expressed in the disturbed expressions, feverishly overlapping imagery, and vividly imagined creatures.
Abigail Lee Goldberger
San Francisco, CA, USA
There was a doorway inside the cat
Oil on Canvas 13 in x 17 in
I am a narrative artist who is inspired by myths, dreams and storytelling in general. I love the way that images of fantastic situations and anthropomorphic animals defy easy categorization and thus allow a viewer to really engage with the work as they try to sort out what exactly they are seeing. All of my artworks are an attempt to create a connection between myself and an audience by drawing on the subconscious to see what sort of images emerge and allow some sort of understanding to grow from there. This piece, “There was a doorway inside the cat” is the first painting of five and the first line in a story series called, ‘The Doorway Inside the Cat’. The story continues as a girl enters the doorway and wanders through the cat until she finds it’s eyes and looks through them, out on a world that looks different from everything she has seen before.
Katia Díaz Correa
México
Geck-alebrije
Nature is an inspiration, lizards and geckos with its form and color composition motivates my imagination on an alebrije, a fantastic animal design in origin by oaxacan people
Eli Wright
Emporia, Kansas, USA
Martok & Company
Digital artwork, 8.5″x11″
This is what I envision when I am around my English mastiffs. They spend so much of their time sleeping, slobbering, and flopping around to the point where it really feels like they have multiple heads. They also have huge personalities which can sometimes change really fast or mesh together depending on the situation. I thought this drawing fit your theme based on its creature-like qualities and multiple heads.
Rain Demetri
Philadelphia, PA, USA
Rabbit Stew
Acrylic paint on wood panel, 11″x14″
Rain creates works inspired by “rubber hose” animation, animals and the surreal. Much of her work is also derived from traditional art, dark art concepts and caricature techniques. She explores whimsical and grotesque themes influenced by behaviors in nature and the imagination.
Sally de Courcy
Woking
Dream or Nightmare?
Sculpture 50cm x 50 cm x 50cm
Dream or Nightmare – an autobiographical response to the recent pandemic. Faces with a dream-like quality explore the surreality of being isolated in lockdown as an immunocompromised artist and medically retired doctor. The work is personal, just as the artist has had to rebuild herself piece by piece so the sculpture has evolved by using repeated metaphorical objects that relate to the pandemic. Femurs reference mortality and are combined with driftwood – symbolic of feeling beached (stranded) and like the virus returns in waves. Both are vestigial remains and are therefore rendered to look like bone. When viewed, the contextual links are re-assembled to reveal a narrative. Arms reflect the inability to embrace, and the bats the vector of Covid 19 invade the sculpture. The work is bound by bandages a reference to the artists medical past and mixed identity as a patient. They also allude to Florence Nightingale and the Nightingale hospitals. The work is decorative but reveals the darker aspects of the pandemic, creating dissonance. The sum becomes a surreal, optical puzzle oscillating between dream and nightmare.
Devis Bergantin
Caronno Pertusella (VA), Italy
In the beginning
ballpoint pen on paper, 21 x 29,7 cm
Always swinging amongst extremes: truth and artifice, control (or hypercontrol) and liberation, strong affective attachment to the work and abandonment, irrationality and rationality. This is a semi-automatic drawing of a demonic creature living in my unconscious.
Kristen DiSano
Rhode Island, USA
Gentle
Ink on paper, 6″x8″
The idea of creating something that isn’t real is inherently fascinating to me. I enjoy using imagery from the natural world and twisting it into something that isn’t entirely recognizable. Birds are especially intriguing to me and they are often the subjects of my work. I find that the creatures I create tend to have a backstory that I figure out as I go along. It’s like an internal mythos in my head.
Lovely collection of work; I’m honored to be included in this virtual exhibit!
Spectacularly Eclectic and High Quality. I look forward to perusing these shows. What a gem this online gallery is. The wide world needs to see!
Such a nice and interesting work developed by all artist.
Well and tightly curated! Take a bow!