Chrystal Chan
Tags: animals, dark fairy tales, deer, illustrations, innocence/menace, modern fairy tales, neo-victorian, pop surrealism, realism, symbolism
Hell House: The Art of Esao Andrews
Esao Andrews combines a colorful palette with a Gothic sensibility. Some of his paintings are twists on traditional portraits from earlier epochs akin to the work of Nicola Samorì. Wildly dilapidated and foreboding houses are a recurring motif, and, reminiscent of Shirley Jackson‘s psychological horror stories, depict the inner, psychical falling apart, decay, distortion, and warping. Fairy tales and folklore, including Pinocchio and Thumbelina, loom in the forefront with menacing or perverted appeal. In some works, his vibrant style illustrates the bizarre, the obscene, and aberrations, contrasting atrocious or monstrous things such as a giant, bloated black spider with a symbol of sweetness, purity, and elevation such as a child or an angel. Some of his illustrations are cartoonish, charmingly retro, with a dark, whimsical sense of humor, while others are realistically rendered and Dali-esque, while yet others are macabre and lovelorn, bloody tale-telling depictions.
Tags: (twists on) traditional art, dark, illustrations, innocence/menace, macabre, modern fairy tales, monsteresque, neo-victorian, pop surrealism, portraits, realism, religious imagery, spiders, surreal, symbolism, victorian
Mia Calderone
Ghostly, sinuous, beautifully illustrated apparitions with elongated, eerie, torturously expressive wraith-like hands figure prominently in Mia Calderone‘s exquisite and highly personal ink drawings. Her influences and inspirations include Catholicism, medieval illuminated Bibles, Art Nouveau (particularly Alphonse Mucha and Aubrey Beardsley), and contemporary artists Takato Yamamoto and Laura Laine.
Tags: articulate hands, black and white, dark fairy tales, emotive, exposed anatomy, expressive, femininity, flowers in hair, ghostly, hair, inky, intricate line drawings, neo-victorian, sexuality, twins/doppelgangers/doubles, victorian
A is for Arsenic: Taxidermia
Taxidermia is the new jewelry + apparel collection from Amelia Arsenic/Destroyx‘s brand A is for Arsenic. The black+white-color-themed collection features laser-cut perspex jewelry designs and T-shirts & tanks inspired by taxidermy motifs, Victorian memento mori imagery, and vanitas artwork. The photography below was shot by Melissa Jenkins, with art direction & styling by Amelia Arsenic. See the complete collection here.
{Taxidermia: a graphic world of dark Victoriana, memento mori and macabre taxidermy. Featuring vicious yet elegant designs with a nod to the past, Taxidermia is a thoroughly contemporary art jewellery and apparel collection created and constructed in London.}
Tags: amelia arsenic, animals, antlers, avant-garde goth, black and white, bugs, deer, destroyx, jewelry, macabre, neo-victorian, spooky animal-themed jewelry, taxidermy
Lost Fish’s Alice
These beautiful images are from the book Alice, à travers le miroir, a French edition of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There illustrated by Lost Fish (see my previous post on her).
Tags: (twists on) traditional art, alice in wonderland, children, cute little girls, dollflesh, fragility, historically inspired, illustrations, innocence/menace, lolita-esque, lost fish, neo-victorian, pop surrealism, porcelain, precious, queens, red and white, surreal, sweet/melancholy
Roses and Thorns: The Art of Liza Corbett
Tags: animals, art shows, baroque, bird wings, branches, deer, dolls, fairy tales, flowers, flowers in hair, ghosts, greek mythology, hair, historically inspired, illustrations, intricate line drawings, jeremy hush, little red riding hood, liza corbett, macabre, nature, neo-victorian, red, roses, skulls, soft color, surreal, swan, victorian, wolves
Neo-Victorianism + Japanese Inspiration + Consumer Whoredom: The Art of Alex Gross
The Victorian era, traditional Japanese art and contemporary Japanese pop culture, super-consumer culture, mid-century America, classic Christian iconography, poster art, ironic/mystical symbolism, and ice cream cones all mix together in Alex Gross’ bright, colorful brand of Pop Surrealism.
Tags: (twists on) traditional art, 1950s, animals, classic hollywood, colorful, consumerism, edo-period japan, geisha-inspired, neo-victorian, nurse, pop surrealism, religious imagery, retro, symbolism, victorian
Another trailer for Alice: Madness Returns
Here is a trailer, featuring gameplay, for Alice: Madness Returns, which was released earlier this month (making it the fifth and final trailer).
Alice: Madness Returns is released in the U.S. on June 14, and in Europe on June 16, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.
I’m so looking forward to this!
Tags: alice in wonderland, american mcgee, colorful, cute n creepy little creatures, dark fairy tales, dreamscapes, gloomy color schemes, hauntingly beautiful, horror video games, innocence/menace, insane asylum aesthetic, insanity, madness, neo-victorian, psychological horror, surreal, trailers, victorian
Lori Earley
Lori Earley was one of the very first artists I discovered when I was getting into Pop Surrealism years ago, so it seems fitting that I do a post on her sometime. Earley has been exhibiting her distinctive, hyperrealistic, haunting portraits of women since 2004. The “distorted realism” of these paintings gives them a poignant beauty. They portray otherworldly female subjects, sharply yet delicately delineating their slightly alien features and capturing their expressions with incredible detail. As her Website bio aptly puts it, “While her femme fatale portraits mature in style and intensity, they retain her signature ethereal quality that embodies an undeniably feminine force.”
Tags: alien beauty, distorted bodies, doll-like, emotive, enlarged eyes, expressive, hauntingly beautiful, lori earley, neo-victorian, pop surrealism, portraits, realism, sweet/melancholy, virtuoso
Poor Little Dears: The Sinister and Mysterious Childhood Depictions of Hikari Shimoda
Hikari Shimoda‘s creepy paintings of children depict them as sweet, sinister, wounded and abused. The eerie mouths, asymmetrical, strange little faces and one-eyed appearance (often one milky eye, one bruised and bloody-looking) of these alien but painfully familiar little beings, rendered in bright or pastel, almost child-friendly, but also quite subtly mixed and profound, colors, all serve to give a creeping sense of the corruption of innocent childhood, an inversion of the saccharine bliss associated with little children.
As Shimoda explains in her artist’s statement, “Contrasting with my daily cheerful demeanor, my unexpressed emotions accumulate inside of me. I feel like an outsider, isolated, lost, and have a hard time building relationships with others, but I never give up being part of the world. The secret to survival? Observe, feel, and listen to yourself. I stand in front of my canvas and confront it, releasing all the built-up unverbalized emotions, the chaos, and the unnoticeable darkness. Even though I know my contrasting side will be shone in the light with no place to hide, I paint to live and to be connected in this world. I accept and understand myself more through my artistic processes than anything else. As I know myself more, I can see others better.
My motif is mainly children. They are nobody, and yet, they could be somebody. They could be me as a small child, or they could be somebody’s inner child. Children, as ambiguous of an existence as they are, reflect my personal world and the universal problems that society today has.”
Tags: bandages, bizarre, bruises, children, colorful, cute n creepy little creatures, distorted bodies, dollflesh, injuries, innocence/menace, lolita-esque, mute, neo-victorian, pastel, surreal, twins/doppelgangers/doubles, unnaturally colored flesh, wound
Categories
Search
Contact
© 2010-2011 Synesthesia Garden