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 […]
Category: Dark Art
Darkness and Innocence in the Illustrations of Yuriko Shirou
Yuriko Shirou is a self-taught illustrator based in Mexico. He has worked in many different art styles—including manga, American comics, and figurative art—and has done projects for publishers around the world. His illustrations resemble morbid fairy tales, conflating innocence with darkness. The moth is a recurring symbol, channeling Mesoamerican beliefs surrounding death omens and the […]
Shadow Sculptures Made of Trash by Tim Noble and Sue Webster
If you have never seen the shadow sculptures of Tim Noble and Sue Webster, it’s time you did. By casting light on grotesque assemblages (or “anti-monuments“) of random trash, scrap metal, and even taxidermied animals, this British collaborative duo creates inkblots of ordinary life; things you might perceive are romantic standoffs, wasted youth, and copulating […]
Seungyea Park: Monsters are Everywhere
The art of Seungyea Park (aka, Spunky Zoe) is a meeting with “monstrousness”—that is, the product of our fear as it festers among us. Fear is necessary to social systems because it distinguishes the self from a monstrous Other—the enemy, the freak. “Monsters are everywhere,” Park writes, because we compulsively create them. To help herself […]
Dark Dream Characters in the Paintings of Bill Mayer
Bill Mayer is a well-known artist currently based in Decatur, Georgia, whose curious creatures have been widely featured on magazines, ads, stamps, posters, and more. Since an early age, Mayer has been attracted to things that are strange; this leaning towards oddity is evident in the selection of gouache paintings shown here, which include anthropomorphic […]
Mortality and Sacred Snakes in the Dark Tattoo Art of Joao Bosco
Joao Bosco is a tattoo artist currently dividing his time between Los Angeles and London. He is recognized for his dark fantasy imagery influenced by both Japanese and American tattoo traditions. Featured here is a selection of his incredible snake tattoos, which are fuelled by his connection to the animal’s sacred symbolism. He is also […]
Visceral Enigmas in the Art Work of Allison Sommers
“Pink viscera, heroic dogs, war detritus, barnacled crabs, and embedded nothings” are among the many curious images, both literal and metaphoric, that the Brooklyn-based art worker Allison Sommers uses to describe her creations. Across her portfolio, animals and human appendages unfurl and splatter into gleeful-grotesque jumbles of rot and metamorphosis, defying the confines of prescribed […]
Shadow-Filled Serenity and Terror: Art & Tattoos by Suhwan Bak
Suhwan Bak is a Seoul-based artist telling his “goth-gloomy” tales on paper and skin. In a style that brings to mind Tim Burton’s lanky-limbed characters and the ghoulish terrors of Edo-Period ukiyo-e, his world is anything but ordinary; cadaver-faced women linger alone, dressed in black and partially obscured with shadows and chaotic fine lines that […]
Sensual Horrors in Tattoos by The Wolf Rosario
Love and death are familiar bedfellows in the stylish, sensual tattoos of Rosario (@thewolfrosario). Currently working out of Black Widow Tattoo in Toronto, Rosario specializes in blackwork, and over the course of his 10+ years of tattooing has gained a reputation for his original horror flash. Retro horror tropes (e.g., big knives, bloodbaths, and memories of […]
Mimesis in New Anatomical Paintings by Nunzio Paci
Nunzio Paci is Bologna-based painter and illustrator known for his philosophic re-imaginings of anatomical studies. Themes of death, rebirth, and the undefinable boundaries of the body and spirit have followed him throughout his work. Whereas his older paintings (featured here) explored life as it bloomed from human cadavers, his newer works shift the focus to […]