“Everything is beautiful, even the ugly,” observes Sail, an artist operating under the curious handle, “Useless Arm.” His paintings are as moody as they are playful, depicting solitary figures bedecked in flowers and masks and pierced by arrows. Various cultural and literary references can be seen throughout—most notably, Asian aesthetics—but Sail’s characters are born of […]
Category: Storytelling
Aesthetics of Melancholy: Poetic Photography by Natalia Drepina
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 […]
Clouded Eyes and Dark Horizons: Photography by Karina Boissonnier
Karina Boissonnier is a Finland-based photographer who is using the camera to create her imagined world. In a beautiful series of portraits titled “An Introduction: Anna,” which are part of a larger project that she has worked hard on, Boissonnier has captured the subject (Wei Wang) in a dark natural landscape filled with creeping branches […]
The Dreamlike, Story-Filled Paintings of Herakut
Herakut is the name of a German street artist duo comprised of Hera (Jasmin Siddiqui) and Akut (Falk Lehmann). Since 2004, they have joined their skills and shared visions in creating story-and-symbol-filled artworks all around the world, both on buildings as large-scale murals and on canvas, paper, and film in the studio. Duality is a […]
Fusions of Body and Myth: Art by Stephanie Inagaki
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 […]
American Gothic: Eerie Visual Stories by Brendon Burton
Brendon Burton is a visual artist based in Portland whose style reflects his rural upbringing and an enduring fascination with lonely, decaying places; throughout his work, abandoned homes cower before immense backdrops of fields, hills, and storm-bruised skies. We’ve featured his work before, but here is a new series titled “American Gothic,” which reimagines the […]
Minimalist Creature Portraits by Delphine Cencig
Delphine Cencig is a French photographer who discovered her passion for photography after working in various fields, such as cosmetics and visual communication. This diverse background shapes her current work, which is best described as vivid and eclectic; through a combination of photography, fashion, makeup, and digital manipulation, she turns models into dolls, beasts, and […]
Strange Things Are Happening: Drawings by James Lipnickas
James Lipnickas is an artist living in the woods of New England who draws the “strange and unusual.” He finds inspiration in his wandering mind, envisioning absurd events that could occur in ordinary situations. His black-and-white images are set in rural environments, where cabins and lone wanderers are beset by tentacled, multi-dimensional beasts that seem […]
Transcending Sickness: Atmospheric Portraits by Nihil
Nihil is a French artist residing in Norway. “Ventre” is the name of his ongoing project, which includes short, cryptic texts and images filled with symptoms of illness and rapture, often with a medieval, religious slant. He describes his work as “portraits of saints and martyrs who lost their humanity to drown in divine serenity”; […]
Fantasy Meets Strange Fashion in Ilona D. Veresk’s Photography
Ilona D. Veresk describes her work as “romantic and strange,” full of “infantile curiosity” in her portrayal of limitless fantasies. Born in Izhevsk (a small city in Russia) in 1993, Veresk began her artistic career as a painter before transitioning to freelance photography about three years ago. She now lives in Moscow, where she works […]