Author: Hayley Evans

A Stranger in Town: Dark, Symbolic Compositions by Shane Pierce

Shane Pierce is an artist from Missouri (currently based in North Carolina) who describes his life and art as “nomadic”—travelling, working in different creative fields, and populating his oil paintings with skull-faced suitcase-toting wanderers ( “‘a stranger comes to town’ type of theme,” as he describes it in a fascinating interview with Beautiful Bizarre). With […]

Haunted by Animals: Cryptic Visions by Jenna Barton

Twilight fields and haunted pool sheds set the stage for illustrator/designer Jenna Barton’s cryptic visions. Combining watercolor with digital processing, Barton populates her mysterious world with unusual anthropomorphic beasts—a horned saint, a smoke bear, and a shadow dog that revisits the viewer like an unsettling dream. With minimalist yet symbol-filled compositions, Barton invites the viewer […]

Spectral Beasts in the Shadowy Fantasy Realms of Jade Mere

Jade Mere is a writer and illustrator with a passion for fantasy, science fiction, and the paranormal. Humans and animals are her favorite subjects, and this post features a selection of the latter. Just like the moonlit waters of Mere’s Pacific-Northwest home, the animals are filled with phosphorescence, light leaking from their eyes, mouths, and […]

Sinister Medieval Tattoo Art by Christopher Jade

Feast your eyes on the sinister medieval-themed tattoos of Christopher Jade. Lovers of Dark Souls will be intrigued, as will anyone with a penchant for only the darkest of blackwork subjects; demonic knights, necromancers, rotting phantoms, and mutant beasts stalk through his portfolio like the cursed escapees from an ancient, hellish dimension. His intricate linework […]

Hypnotic Digital Sculptures by Maxim Shkret

Maxim Shkret is a Moscow-based artist creating digital sculptures of animals and people. The tools he uses include Autodesk 3ds Max, Vray, Corona Renderer, Pixologic Zbrush, and Wacom Intuos. His unique 3D modeling, reminiscent of paper art, captures the essence of flowing fur, ridged scales, and contoured bone. From foxes to dragons to fierce heroines, […]

Empowering Witchcraft Photography by Helena Darling

Helena Darling—a.k.a., The Woods Witch—is a photographer and tattoo artist living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. “I take photos of mostly everything I see,” she says, but her favorite subjects are people and nature, which fit together beautifully; see her Instagram for a mosaic of East-Coast eros, ambiance, and witchcraft. She aims to document her […]

Radical Beauty: Elizaveta Porodina with Lily Moore

Elizaveta Porodina is a Munich-based (Moscow-born) fashion and fine-art photographer. Her work is experimental, bending reality with colour-burst surrealism and black-and-white romanticism. The emotional symbolism underlying her work derives from her studies in clinical psychology. Featured here is her contribution to Radical Beauty, a photo project aimed at challenging beauty normativity in contemporary culture. The […]

Externalized Inner Worlds: Photography by Javier Gallego Escutia

Javier Gallego Escutia is London-based artist working in photography, film, and (more recently) music. His work is conceptual; rather than documenting the outside world, he focuses on externalizing his inner world. Featured here is a selection of his photography, largely from his “Untitled Portraits” series, which involve surreal depictions of the human body. Defying societal […]

Darkly Elegant Digital Skull Art by Billelis

Billelis is a Brighton-based 3D illustrator and art director. Peruse his portfolio and you will quickly see his fondness for skulls, depicted in a hyperrealist style described as a “dark-yet-elegant romantic fusion.” In the series “Blossom,” flowers erupt from bones, signifying the eternal dance of life and death; elsewhere, as in “Prototype,” his fascination for […]

Raw and Empowering Queer Feminist Tattoos by Charline Bataille

Charline Bataille is a queer femme tattoo artist based in Montreal. She taught herself tattooing at home as a “DIY punk goal” and now works full-time at Minuit Dix. Her Instagram, which is gaining an enthusiastic following, immediately conveys Bataille’s style and politics; bright colours and mischievous characters—sporty goddesses, flaming banana ladies, and tiger-riding warriors […]