Lauren Marx is an artist based in St. Louis, Missouri, who tells stories about birth, death, nature, and the suffering caused by mental illness. Her subjects are animals (her longstanding passion), which she draws with a morbid and mythical flair; peruse her gallery and you will see three-headed calves, geese entwined by their entrails, and saintly moth-haloed wolves. Her work participates in the ageless tradition of totems and fables, drawing upon the power and symbolism of animals to impart meaning and wisdom. The violence speaks to pain and death, but without denial and overwhelming fear; as the creatures unfurl their insides like twisted wreaths and pack the empty torsos with eggs, honeycombs, and birds, there is an understanding that no one is a prisoner in their mortal body; death is a form of becoming, of blooming, of transferring the messy, raw molecules of life from one form to another in an endless cycle. Visit Marx’s website, Facebook, and Instagram to view more of her remarkable art.
Images © Lauren Marx