Tom Strom is an artist based in Edinburgh, Scotland, who paints and tattoos colorful “creature mash-ups.” Among his inspirations are anime and Disney movies—the former for monster design, the latter for colorful backgrounds. He began tattooing over twenty years ago, during which time he experimented with different techniques and developed his style, which is an […]
Category: Birds
The ghosts of sorrow, tragedy, and loneliness wander the dormant forests of Natalia Drepina’s photography. Based in a small city in Russia, Drepina brings her love for the silence and solitude of the countryside into her art, exploring the way twisted roots, animal bones, and rain-wet earth reflect the chilled tenderness of the soul in […]
Stephanie Inagaki is a Southern California–based fine artist and metalsmith. Her charcoal drawings are dark, poetic fusions of self and myth, drawing especially from Japanese folklore. The female subjects—which are often representations of herself—merge with crows and supernatural monsters, their bodies transmuting into uncanny hybrids inscribed with ageless mythologies. A particular emphasis is placed on […]
A relative up-and-comer in the tattoo industry, Autumn Dancer has rapidly become an in-demand artist. Describing her style as a sort of “magical photorealism,” Dancer’s dark fantasy tattoos breath life into creatures that could not possibly exist in reality. While her professional time is dedicated to working on clients and attending conventions like the Van […]
In Italian folklore, the fate are magical beings (like fairies) who disguise themselves as humans to play dangerous tricks on people. This is the mythology that inspires the work of Fate Troppo Belle (Alina Akhmatova), a digital artist based in Milan. Using nature imagery and unusual objects, the fate she envisions are modern tricksters, often […]
Welcome to the mysterious world of Placide Avantia—an illustrator, tattoo artist, and self-professed alien. Working from Fuscare—her dimly lit studio located in the south of France—Placide Avantia uses black vegan ink and her dark imagination to spawn creatures that otherwise dwell only in nightmares, alternate worlds, and untold myths. From razor-beaked crows to the jagged […]
Lana Crooks is a textile artist based in Chicago. At first glance, the delicate skulls she creates appear to be real, adorned with flowers and jewels and displayed in bell jars like magical specimens found in the back of a curiosity shop. Look closer, however, and you can see the intricate textures of wool and […]
Josephine Cardin is a photographer based in Rochester, New York, whose dreamy portraiture exposes “human themes of loneliness, isolation, melancholy, love, and loss.” Featured here are images from her recent work, all of which are self-portraits. Having trained as a ballet dancer, Cardin incorporates movement, using her body to pose in ways that are indicative […]
Sewing is deeply ingrained into our history as human beings. During the Paleolithic era, early humans used bones to fashion crude sewing needles that they’d then use to sew together animal skins with sinew thread. Eventually, this design was refined, with the first known needle-with-eye dating back about 25,000 years ago. Sewing was done by […]
Animals have long been used as stand-ins for human morality in fables and fairy-tales, but Massachusetts-based Josie Morway brings them into contemporary consciousness with her beautiful, cryptic portraits. Each painted creature carries an air of agelessness and wisdom, their bodies framed by geometric formations and Latin scripts (one such as phrase states “Faciam ut mei […]
