The oil paintings of Mexican artist Jose Luis Lopez Galvan are guaranteed to make you look twice—once for shock, and the second time to soak in the potent symbolism. Combining the bizarre eroticism of Hieronymus Bosch with Cassius Marcellus Coolidge’s low-brow critique of class issues, Galvan inserts his own contemporary style to produce a new breed […]
Category: Monsters
Esoteric Rites and Wonder in the World of Valin Mattheis
The world of Valin Mattheis is filled with otherworldly creatures, skeletal priests, and moments of transcendental awe. He draws inspiration from a variety of sources, including the symbolist artists, existentialism, Jungian psychology, and religions and mythologies the world over. The two-dimensional compositions and skeletal archetypes seem somewhat reminiscent of medieval art referencing the Black Death, […]
New Immersive Fantasy Landscapes by Jakub Rozalski
We featured the work of digital artist Jakub Rozalski back in 2014, but since then he has been busy creating more immersive landscapes that combine turn-of-the-twentieth-century Polish countrysides with werewolves and robots. According to his artist’s statement, the most important aspects of his art involve creating an atmosphere and telling a story. The stories he […]
Fleshlettes: Cutely Grotesque Sculptures by Jonathan Payne
We’ve featured the work of Jonathan Payne before in a list of 10 freaky anatomical sculptures, but his endearingly gross “Fleshlettes” deserve a spotlight of their own. Based in LA, Payne is a creature and character designer who sculpts everything from whimsical wizards to nightmarish monsters. In more recent years, he began to create Fleshlettes, […]
Stunning Animal–Machine Hybrids by Heidi Taillefer
Nature and technology collide in the beautifully bizarre paintings of Heidi Taillefer, a Montreal-based artist who has been showing her work for more than twenty years. Her colorful style is informed by the early twentieth-century surrealists, summoning a broad range of figurative traditions, from the drama of baroque portraiture to whimsical steampunk imagery. Taillefer’s themes […]
Creepy Canada: 10 Horror Films from the North
Despite its picturesque views of mountains, sun-kissed prairies, and deep woods, Canada has a reputation for being a bizarre and scary place. In 1971, Canadian literary theorist Northrop Frye argued that the main trend (or symptom) in Canadian poetry was “a terror of the soul” invoked by the vast and unfeeling landscape.[1] While critics have […]
10 Morbid Sculptures Brimming with Death and Body Horror
Note: Contains violent content. Melting flesh, living corpses, and mutating organs: there are few things as unsettling as wildly degenerating bodies. In the wake of twisted films that characterized the science fiction and horror of the late 1970s and 80s—Ridley Scott’s “Alien” and John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” for example—the journal “Screen” coined the term “body […]
Portraits of Fear by Magdalena Pacewicz
“I still feel fear, but I like to smile,” writes Magdalena Pacewicz, describing the ambivalent subjects of her ghostly overlay photography. Based in Wroclaw, Poland, Pacewicz mixes digital technology with traditional media to create black-and-white portraits, melting together facial features with ghoulish eyes and lipless mouths. Seeking to dive deep into the human psyche, Pacewicz […]
Grotesque, Beautiful Life: Sculptures by Russel Cameron
Note: Contains images that may be considered graphic and disturbing to some readers. Russel Cameron is an American, self-taught artist from Brooklyn, New York, who creates sculptures that are grotesque and profound in their representations of life. With skin-like textures and shapes similar to human body parts, each creation looks deformed and unsettling, devoid of […]
Adrian Cox Mutates and Reassembles the Body In Nature
Adrian Cox is a Missouri-based artist who paints “Border Creatures”—organic mutants who defy what we staunchly distinguish as “man” and “nature.” Sometimes they appear humanoid—humorously engaging in intellectual activities, such as painting and stargazing—but their bodies are engulfed with organic debris and sprouting plant life, signifying the messy processes of death and rebirth. In other […]